Joint Research Group Ultrafast Dynamics

Nanoscale heat transport

Heat diffusion processes in tailored materials on the nanometer scale may deviate to a large extend from diffusion processes in bulk materials. The presence of interfaces and phonon backfolding due to an artificial supersymmetry may influence the heat conductivity and the population of heat carrying phonon modes. At the XPP/KMC3-Beamline, we can probe the local heat expansion with a temporal resolution of 100 picoseconds. The probe process is material specific and allows for discrimination of the temperature between adjacent layers. In combination with heat-diffusion simulations, we can reconstruct the heat flow through nanoscale systems like superlattices or multilayer structures.

Simulated heat diffusion of a photo-excited LSMO/STO superlattice sample