On the emergence of heat waves in the transient thermal grating geometry

Abstract: The propagation of heat in the transient thermal grating geometry is studied based on phonon Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) in different phonon transport regimes. Our analytical and numerical results show that the phonon dispersion relation and temperature play a significant role in the emergence of heat wave. For the frequency-independent BTE, the heat wave appears as long as the phonon resistive scattering is not sufficient, while for the frequency-dependent BTE, the heat wave could disappear in the ballistic regime, depending on the grating period and temperature. We predict that the heat wave could appear in the suspended graphene and silicon in extremely low temperature but disappear at room temperature.