A biomimetic basis for auditory processing and the perception of natural sounds

Biomimicry is a powerful science that aims to take advantage of nature's remarkable ability to devise innovative solutions to challenging problems. In the setting of hearing, mimicking how humans hear is the foremost strategy in designing effective artificial hearing approaches. In this work, we explore the mathematical foundations for the exchange of design inspiration and features between biological hearing systems, artificial sound-filtering devices, and signal processing algorithms. Our starting point is a concise asymptotic analysis of subwavelength acoustic metamaterials. We are able to fine tune this structure to mimic the biomechanical properties of the cochlea, at the same scale. We then turn our attention to developing a biomimetic signal processing algorithm. We use the response of the cochlea-like structure as an initial filtering layer and then add additional biomimetic processing stages, designed to mimic the human auditory system's ability to recognise the global properties of natural sounds

Ideology in the C. C. F.-N. D. P.

Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 40-07, page: . Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1973

Topologically protected modes in dispersive materials: the case of undamped systems

This work extends the theory of topological protection to dispersive systems. This theory has emerged from the field of topological insulators and has been established for continuum models in both classical and quantum settings. It predicts the existence of localised interface modes based on associated topological indices and shows that, when such modes exist, they benefit from enhanced robustness with respect to imperfections. This makes topologically protected modes an ideal starting point for building wave guiding devices. However, in many practical applications such as optics or locally resonant meta-structures, materials are dispersive in the operating frequency range. In this case, the associated spectral theory is less straightforward. This work shows that the existing theory of topological protection can be extended to dispersive settings. We consider time-harmonic waves in one-dimensional systems with no damping

Landscape of wave localisation at low frequencies

High-contrast scattering problems are special among classical wave systems as they allow for strong wave localisation at low frequencies. We use an asymptotic framework to develop a landscape theory for high-contrast systems that resonate in a subwavelength regime. Our from-first-principles asymptotic analysis yields a characterisation in terms of the generalised capacitance matrix, giving a discrete approximation of the three-dimensional scattering problem. We develop landscape theory for the generalised capacitance matrix and use it to predict the positions of three-dimensional wave localisation in random and non-periodic systems of subwavelength resonators