Hurley 9802624 This award supports a 12 month Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Postdoctoral Fellowship for Dr. David Hurley at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan. Dr. Hurley will work with Dr. Wright in the Department of Applied Physics on a research project entitled, "Investigation of Quantum Dynamics of Coherent Phonon Generation in Semiconductor Nanostructures." The proposed research is aimed at essential basic studies of the coherent phonon generation in semiconductor films and nanostructures. In the past thirty years, the optical generation and detection of lattice vibrations (phonons) using laser pulsed excitation has been utilized to probe macroscopic and microscopic material properties. In particular, ultrafast generation using laser pulses with extremely narrow temporal profiles (pulse width~100fs) has been used to study the dynamics of photo-excited non- equilibrium carriers and phonon propagation, in semiconductor film and nanostructures. Despite growing interest from many groups in this area there are still significant gaps in our knowledge of phonon generation and detection mechanisms in these materials. For example, the ultrafast generation mechanisms in direct band gap semiconductor samples, as basic as single layer GaAs, have not been studied experimentally. This groundwork will pave the way for the investigation of generation and propagation of coherent phonons in geometries relevant to heat transport and carrier relaxation in nanoscale electronics or optoelectronic devices such as semiconductor lasers. ***
