Mesoscopic Phonon Transmission through a Nanowire-Bulk Contact

Abstract

We calculate the frequency-dependent mesoscopic acoustic phonon transmission probability through the abrupt junction between a semi-infinite, one-dimensional cylindrical quantum wire and a three-dimensional bulk insulator, using a perturbative technique that is valid at low frequency. The system is described using elasticity theory, and traction-free boundary conditions are applied to all free surfaces. In the low-frequency limit the transmission probability vanishes as the frequency squared, the transport being dominated by the longitudinal channel, which produces a monopole source of elastic radiation at the surface of the bulk solid. The thermal conductance between an equilibrated wire nonadiabatically coupled to a bulk insulator should therefore vanish with temperature at temperature cubed.