%0 Journal Article %A Ravi S Prasher %A Tao Tong %A Arun Majumdar %B Applied Physics Letters %D 2007 %G eng %N 14 %P 143119 %R 10.1063/1.2794428 %T Diffraction-limited phonon thermal conductance of nanoconstrictions %U http://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.2794428 %V 91 %8 01/2007 %! Appl. Phys. Lett. %X

Thermal transport across nanosized constrictions is calculated considering wave effects. It is shown that Rayleigh-type phonon diffraction reduces thermal transport across nanosized constrictions at low temperatures. We show that for $a T ∕ v_{Debye} < 0.01 \times 10^{- 9} K s$ , where $a$ is the radius of the constriction, $T$ the temperature, and $v_{Debye}$ the Debye velocity of the solid material, diffraction effects are important.