Fundamental concepts of thermal phonon coherence
Abstract
As scientists seek to transcend traditional material property relationships, novel structures with artificial periodicity, configurational complexity, and disorder are increasingly being explored. For phonons, these architectures can induce significant phase correlations, which strongly shifts lattice heat conduction away from the conventional framework of particle-like scattering. This thermal phonon coherence can develop in space and time separately, resulting in distinct wave-like phenomena. Here we rigorously outline the theories of phonon spatial and temporal coherence. Crucially, this review focuses on demystifying and building conceptual understanding of the fundamental principles linking the various thermal conductivity and phonon property results reported in the literature. Furthermore, we use this understanding to establish a comprehensive physical picture of the wave nature of thermal phonons, unifying the spatial and temporal coherence theories. Altogether, the theoretical dissections in this review provide an extensive knowledge base for understanding and engineering thermal phonons in complex materials.
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BibTeX
@misc{maranets2026fundamental,
title = {{Fundamental concepts of thermal phonon coherence}},
author = {Theodore Maranets and Haoran Cui and Milad Nasiri and Evan Doe and Yan Wang},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.36270},
eprint = {2609.36270},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.36270},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Fundamental concepts of thermal phonon coherence
AU - Theodore Maranets
AU - Haoran Cui
AU - Milad Nasiri
AU - Evan Doe
AU - Yan Wang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/28
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.36270
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.36270
AB - As scientists seek to transcend traditional material property relationships, novel structures with artificial periodicity, configurational complexity, and disorder are increasingly being explored. For phonons, these architectures can induce significant phase correlations, which strongly shifts lattice heat conduction away from the conventional framework of particle-like scattering. This thermal phonon coherence can develop in space and time separately, resulting in distinct wave-like phenomena. Here we rigorously outline the theories of phonon spatial and temporal coherence. Crucially, this review focuses on demystifying and building conceptual understanding of the fundamental principles linking the various thermal conductivity and phonon property results reported in the literature. Furthermore, we use this understanding to establish a comprehensive physical picture of the wave nature of thermal phonons, unifying the spatial and temporal coherence theories. Altogether, the theoretical dissections in this review provide an extensive knowledge base for understanding and engineering thermal phonons in complex materials.
ER -