Recently, a research team led by Professor Qi Zhang from the School of Physics at Nanjing University has made new progress in the study of coherent terahertz (THz) magnon-phonon three-wave mixing (TWM).

The research team combined strong-field two-dimensional THz spectroscopy with extreme experimental conditions, including low temperatures and high magnetic fields, to reveal second- and third-order nonlinear magnon processes under strong-field excitation, as well as nonlinear TWM coupling between magnon and phonon. A Liouville-space Lindblad dynamical simulation framework was established to elucidate the mechanism of nonlinear coupling between magnetic and lattice degrees of freedom. These results lay the foundation for realizing quantum entanglement between magnetic and vibrational excitations through coherent nonlinear interactions and open new avenues for quantum control and hybrid quantum technologies in the THz frequency range.

This work was published in the journal Nature Communications, entitled ‘Coherent terahertz magnon-phonon three-wave mixing in a layered antiferromagnet’.

Figure1. a, Time-domain coherent oscillation driven by a strong-field THz pulse. b, Fourier spectrum of the coherent response, resolving both phonon and magnon modes. c, Two-dimensional spectrum of the nonlinear channel, in which multiple nonlinear processes are directly resolved. d, Frequency-vector representation of the magnon–phonon three-wave-mixing process. e, Energy-level diagram illustrating magnon–phonon three-wave mixing.

Publication link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-77233-5