Quantitative investigation of thermal phonon pulses in sapphire, silicon, and quartz

Abstract

Using pulse-heated constantan films as a thermal phonon radiator and superconducting tin bolometer as a phonon detector, we present for the first time a full quantitative comparison between observed bolometer signals and adequate rigorous model calculations for transmission experiments ina-cut sapphire, [111]-cut silicon, as well asX-cut quartz andZ-cut quartz. Details of the observed phonon signals are explained and understood. From these experiments, we are also able to extract information about the phonon absorption coefficient in the normal state of the polycrystalline tin bolometer for longitudinal and transverse polarized phonons in quantitative agreement with an earlier experiment ina-cut sapphire which was performed with a superconducting tunnel junction as a detector. The observed transmission signals can be explained for sapphire and silicon by ballistic propagation with additional small angle scattering, but for quartz strong frequency downconversion occurs for phonons with frequencies above half a Terahertz.

In a succeding paper (Part II) the parameter deduced from the transmission experiment are applied to the analysis of the observed phonon signals in reflection experiments in the same crystals under the same conditions.