Measuring chiral phonons
Abstract
Chiral phonons are quantized vibrations where the atomic motion in a solid breaks improper rotation symmetries. In many cases, chiral phonons possess angular momenta and are therefore selective to circularly polarized light. Both fundamental and applied research efforts on chiral phonons have been gaining increasing attention owing to their importance in a variety of fields including spintronics, spin-selective chemical reactions, thermal transport, quantum information processing and biosensing, where the bi-directional spin-lattice coupling enabled by chiral phonons can be harnessed in new ways, and potentially lead to new functionalities. Thus far, the studies of chiral phonons across diverse materials platforms have evolved largely independently within these fields, but the experimental techniques are often interrelated. In this perspective, we present a detailed description, as well as advantages and disadvantages of the current approaches for experimentally measuring chiral phonons in chiral and achiral materials. We conclude with a discussion of new methods for measuring chiral phonons. Ultimately, this work seeks to offer an experimental guide for systematically investigating the properties of chiral phonons in various materials systems and applications.
Related
- Chiral Surface Phonons
- Electronic Orbital Angular Momentum Driven by Finite-Momentum Phonons: Beyond Chiral and Axial Phonons
- Chiral phonons driven by chiral cavities
- Antiferro-Chiral Phonons as Conjugate Fields to Néel Order in 𝒫𝒯-Symmetric Antiferromagnets
- Ultrafast Magnetization Induced from Raman-Active Axial Chiral Phonons
BibTeX
@misc{rao2026measuring,
title = {{Measuring chiral phonons}},
author = {Rahul Rao and Hanyu Zhu and Nicholas Kotov and Thuc T. Mai and Maria F. Muñoz and Dali Sun and Jun Liu and Wonjin Choi and Renee R. Frontiera and Angela R. H. Hight Walker},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.10973},
eprint = {2609.10973},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.10973},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Measuring chiral phonons
AU - Rahul Rao
AU - Hanyu Zhu
AU - Nicholas Kotov
AU - Thuc T. Mai
AU - Maria F. Muñoz
AU - Dali Sun
AU - Jun Liu
AU - Wonjin Choi
AU - Renee R. Frontiera
AU - Angela R. H. Hight Walker
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/10
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.10973
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.10973
AB - Chiral phonons are quantized vibrations where the atomic motion in a solid breaks improper rotation symmetries. In many cases, chiral phonons possess angular momenta and are therefore selective to circularly polarized light. Both fundamental and applied research efforts on chiral phonons have been gaining increasing attention owing to their importance in a variety of fields including spintronics, spin-selective chemical reactions, thermal transport, quantum information processing and biosensing, where the bi-directional spin-lattice coupling enabled by chiral phonons can be harnessed in new ways, and potentially lead to new functionalities. Thus far, the studies of chiral phonons across diverse materials platforms have evolved largely independently within these fields, but the experimental techniques are often interrelated. In this perspective, we present a detailed description, as well as advantages and disadvantages of the current approaches for experimentally measuring chiral phonons in chiral and achiral materials. We conclude with a discussion of new methods for measuring chiral phonons. Ultimately, this work seeks to offer an experimental guide for systematically investigating the properties of chiral phonons in various materials systems and applications.
ER -