Journal Article

PUBDB-2025-03552

http://join2-wiki.gsi.de/foswiki/pub/Main/Artwork/join2_logo100x88.png Phonon engineering in ultrathin Sn films

Velten, S. (Corresponding author)Extern*DESY* ; Schlage, K.XFEL.EU*DESY* ; Sergeev, I.XFEL.EU*DESY* ; Leupold, O.XFEL.EU*DESY* ; Steinbrügge, R.Extern*DESY* ; Reddy, R.Extern* ; Hu, M. Y. ; Alp, E. E. ; Bocklage, L.XFEL.EU*DESY* ; Roehlsberger, R. (Corresponding author)XFEL.EU*DESY*

2026
Wiley-VCH Weinheim

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Please use a persistent id in citations: doi:10.1002/admi.202501078  doi:10.3204/PUBDB-2025-03552

Abstract: Nanostructuring of materials offers unique opportunities to manipulate their vibrational properties due to the reduced dimensionality. This is widely exploited in materials science to engineer thermal conductivity in nanostructures, for example. Similarly, in quantum optics, nanoscale engineering of vibrational states is used to suppress thermal decoherence and enhance coherent light–matter interactions. In x-ray quantum optics, vibrational properties are especially critical as the light–matter interaction is often mediated by coherent excitations of ultrasharp nuclear resonances. These coherent processes require a recoilless interaction, i.e., no energy is exchanged between nuclei and the lattice. Consequently, nuclear resonances with typically low recoilless interaction fractions, such as 119Sn, are often unsuitable for such applications. This raises the question: can nanoscale engineering enhance coherent light–mater interactions inx-ray quantum optics as well, thereby enabling the use of such nuclear resonances. In this work we demonstrate the tunability of the vibrational properties of nanometerthin Sn films by embedding them in multilayer structures, achieving a drastic increase in the recoilless fraction by nearly one order of magnitude. Using nuclear inelastic x-ray scattering, we investigated the phonon density of states of Sn layers in relation to interlayer diffusion, structural disorder and intermetallic compound formation at interfaces. Our results show that by carefully choosing the embedding material, the vibrational behavior of Sn can be substantially modified. This opens a pathway to drastically enhance the elastic coherent scattering cross-section of 119Sn, making its 23.9 keV nuclear resonance accessible for x-ray quantum optics applications.

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Contributing Institute(s):

1. PETRA-S (FS-PETRA-S)
2. DOOR-User (DOOR ; HAS-User)

Research Program(s):

1. 632 - Materials – Quantum, Complex and Functional Materials (POF4-632) (POF4-632)
2. 6G3 - PETRA III (DESY) (POF4-6G3) (POF4-6G3)
3. FS-Proposal: I-20190091 (I-20190091) (I-20190091)

Experiment(s):

1. PETRA Beamline P01 (PETRA III)

Appears in the scientific report 2026

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