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Quantum Functional Engineering Lab
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A lab that generates sound inside matter with ultrashort pulse lasers and watches that sound travel through it.
AboutAbout the lab
Creating sound with light, seeing matter with sound.
The Quantum Functional Engineering Lab uses ultrashort pulse lasers to generate sound inside materials and observes how it propagates.
Ultrasound, whose frequencies are far higher than the sound audible to the human ear, can reveal very fine structures and stiffness.
The lab films ripples spreading across crystal surfaces as video, and controls how sound travels using phononic crystals and acoustic metamaterials.
It also works on detecting nanoscale vibrations with atomic force microscopy and observing ultrafast electron and heat diffusion.
Key terms
- Ultrasound
- Sound with a frequency higher than the range the human ear can hear
- Phononic crystal
- An artificial material whose structure is arranged periodically so that the way sound and vibration pass through it can be controlled
- Acoustic metamaterial
- A material engineered so that sound can be manipulated in ways not found in nature
NewsLab news
View More ↗ResearchResearch themes
Ultrashort pulse lasers create sound pulses as short as a picosecond, and a second laser observes how they propagate. From filming ripples spreading across crystal surfaces to controlling sound with phononic crystals and acoustic metamaterials, the lab pursues research that sees and manipulates sound.
*Illustrative imageHow Topological Vibrations Propagate
Properties like those of topological insulators can also arise in classical waves such as light and sound. The lab built a two-dimensional wave machine cut from a stainless steel plate with a laser, and demonstrated in a visible form a topological waveguide in which vibration propagates only along the boundary.
*Illustrative imagePicosecond Ultrasound Tomography
A picosecond sound pulse is only 0.1 micrometers or less in length. An infrared laser strikes an aluminum film attached to a glass hemisphere to generate the sound pulse, and measurements are taken from many directions while the sample is rotated. A computer then reconstructs the shape of the sound traveling through the glass.
*Illustrative imageMeasuring the Stiffness of Transparent Materials
A picosecond sound pulse is shorter than the wavelength of visible light and acts as a semi-transparent mirror that reflects light. The lab added refinements, such as changing the angle of incidence of the light with an objective lens, to the method of determining sound velocity from changes in the reflected light, making it possible to capture sound over a wide range of frequencies.
*Illustrative imageStopping Sound with Maze Balls
In a collaboration with a group in China, the lab built onion-like multilayer maze balls from 3D-printed parts bonded together. They showed that when such a ball is placed in a tube, it blocks much of the sound intensity even though it obstructs only a small part of the cross-section.
MembersFaculty
Members of the Quantum Functional Engineering Lab are faculty members and doctoral, master's, and undergraduate students.As of 2026
- ProfessorOsamu Matsuda
- Associate ProfessorSatoshi Tsuchiya
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “Optical Therapeutics and Medical Nanophotonics Laboratory ( )” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration / Public domain (cropped)
- How Topological Vibrations Propagate: “Chladni I ( )” Carlos Andrés Reyes from Cologne, Germany / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
- Picosecond Ultrasound Tomography: “Focusing light” Pawel Nowakowski / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Measuring the Stiffness of Transparent Materials: “Close-up of the objective lenses of a microscope” Shixart1985 / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
- Stopping Sound with Maze Balls: “Jaraguá do Sul 951” Herr stahlhoefer / Public domain (cropped)
- Related lab (固体物理学): “WF111-Anderson transition-multifractal” RudoRoemer / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (光物性工学): “FemtosecondLaserAction” Шмелёв Артемий Геннадьевич / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (数理物理工学): “Meissner effect p1390048” Mai-Linh Doan / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (超
流動物理学): “Helium-glow” Jurii / CC BY 3.0 (cropped)
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