Son et Lumière: from microphotonics to nanophononics will take place in Cargèse, France, from October 16th to 28th, 2006.

Acoustic phonons play an essential role in almost every electronic and optoelectronic property of solids. For instance, acoustic and optic phonons constitute the main limitation for electrical conductivity; they also determine the performance of semiconductor based optoelectronic devices both limiting their time response and the coherence of carriers. Acoustic phonons are as well the main carriers of heat in insulating and semiconductor materials.

The science of acoustic phonons has experienced a strong renewal in the last years towards new concepts and new objects for the spectral and spatial control of acoustic waves in solids. Following the example of photonic crystals, in which the optic field distribution is artificially modified by modulating the index of refraction, the concepts of phononic crystals and cavities have been introduced for the manipulation of acoustic waves. Through the development of semiconductor nanostructures displaying controlled modulations of acoustic impedance, a new area is arising in nanoscience devoted to the engineering of vibrational and thermal properties at the nanometric scale, and of the interaction of THz sound with photons and electrons manipulated at the same scales. This evolution has come along with the development of new powerful research techniques such as optic generation and detection at the femtosecond and picosecond scale, or the enhancement of the phonon-photon interaction in tuned optical cavities.