Acoustic phonons are usually seen as a primary source of unwanted effects in electronics, optoelectronics, and quantum technologies based on solid-state platforms. This project proposes a series of tunable nanodevices where acoustic phonons constitute, instead, a central resource to unveil wavelength conversion phenomena, transfer information, and simulate systems difficult or impossible to study in optics and electronics. The current trend in nanophononics is to engineer acoustic nanodevices to shape the local acoustic density of states, tailor the light-matter interaction, or enhance the interactions with other systems based on static and predetermined fixed-function nanostructures. This project takes a radically different direction by incorporating responsive materials that change their elastic properties under external stimuli. Using dynamical structures to control acoustic phonons in the GHz-THz range will enable a new dimension in the solid-state physics toolbox.

Schematic phonon network where laser pulses at different wavelengths interact with individual nodes.

Norberto Daniel Lanzillotti Kimura obtained his Ph.D. in 2009 from both the Instituto Balseiro in San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, and the Institute of Nanosciences in Paris, France. His field of research is nanophoNonics and nanomechanics. Between 2009 and 2015 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Bariloche Atomic Center in Argentina, the University of California at Berkeley in the USA, and the Laboratory for Photonics and Nanostructures in France. Since 2015, Norberto Daniel Lanzillotti-Kimura is a researcher at the Center for Nanosciences and Nanotechnology of the CNRS in France, in 2016 he was awarded an ERC Starting Grant (NanoPhennec), and in 2022 an ERC Consolidator Grant (T-Recs) to unveil the phonon dynamics in nanostructures.