Normal mode
A phonon is the quantum mechanical description of an elementary vibrational motion in which a lattice of atoms or molecules uniformly oscillates at a single frequency. In classical mechanics this designates a normal mode of vibration. Normal modes are important because any arbitrary lattice vibration can be considered to be a superposition of these "elementary" vibration modes (cf. Fourier analysis). While normal modes are wave-like phenomena in classical mechanics, phonons have particle-like properties too, in a way related to the wave–particle duality of quantum mechanics.