Those phonons travel through the rod, hit the already excited atoms, and — without getting absorbed — force the atoms to release phonons of their own.
By varying the size of heat sources, Chen and his colleagues can map out how far
phonons travel between collisions, and how much they contribute to heat conduction.
Not exact matches
The concept uses tiny triangular structures to control «
phonons,» quantum - mechanical phenomena that describe how vibrations
travel through a material's crystal structure.
Heat
travels through a material via
phonons, quantized units of vibration that act as heat - carrying particles.
On a more basic level, no one has ever studied
phonons in action, so scientists simply do not know what happens when they
travel through a material.