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Tutorial: Characterizing Microscale Energy Transport in Materials with Transient Grating Spectroscopy

Microscale energy transport processes are crucial in microelectronics, energy harvesting devices, and emerging quantum materials. To study these processes, methods that can probe transport with conveniently tunable length scales are highly desirable. Transient grating spectroscopy (TGS) is such a tool that can monitor microscale energy transport processes associated with various fundamental energy carriers including electrons, phonons, and spins. Having been developed and applied for a long time in the chemistry community, TGS has regained popularity recently in studying different transport regimes in solid-state materials. In this Tutorial, we provide an in-depth discussion of the operational principle and instrumentation details of a modern heterodyne TGS configuration from a practitioner's point of view. We further review recent applications of TGS in characterizing microscale transport of heat, charge, spin, and acoustic waves, with an emphasis on thermal transport.