PhononIn physics, a phonon is a collective excitation in a periodic, elastic arrangement of atoms or molecules in condensed matter, specifically in solids and some liquids. A type of quasiparticle, a phonon is an excited state in the quantum mechanical quantization of the modes of vibrations for elastic structures of interacting particles. Phonons can be thought of as quantized sound waves, similar to photons as quantized light waves. However, photons are fundamental particles that can be individually detected, whereas phonons, being quasiparticles, are an emergent phenomenon.
Sinc functionIn mathematics, physics and engineering, the sinc function, denoted by sinc(x), has two forms, normalized and unnormalized. In mathematics, the historical unnormalized sinc function is defined for x ≠ 0 by Alternatively, the unnormalized sinc function is often called the sampling function, indicated as Sa(x). In digital signal processing and information theory, the normalized sinc function is commonly defined for x ≠ 0 by In either case, the value at x = 0 is defined to be the limiting value for all real a ≠ 0 (the limit can be proven using the squeeze theorem).
