A new study published in Nature Physics describes how a team of scientists used a laser beam to gain access to long-lived soundwaves in crystalline solids as the basis for a potentially new approach to information processing and storage. One of Northern Arizona University’s newest physicists, assistant professor Ryan Behunin, is a co-author of the study. In collaboration with scientists at Yale and the University of Rochester, he helped develop the theory describing these bulk crystalline optomechanical systems.