Non-equilibrium phonon generation and detection in microstructure devices

We demonstrate a method to excite locally a controllable, non-thermal distribution of acoustic phonon modes ranging from 0 to ∼200 GHz in a silicon microstructure, by decay of excited quasiparticle states in an attached superconducting tunnel junction (STJ). The phonons transiting the structure ballistically are detected by a second STJ, allowing comparison of direct with indirect transport pathways. This method may be applied to study how different phonon modes contribute to the thermal conductivity of nanostructures.