Ultra small mode volume defect cavities in spatially ordered and disordered metamaterials

In this letter we study metamaterials made out of resonant electric wires arranged on a spatial scale much smaller than the free space wavelength and we show that they present a hybridization band that is insensible to positional disorder. We experimentally demonstrate defect cavities in disordered and ordered samples and prove that, analogous to those designed in photonic crystals, those cavities can present very high quality factors. In addition we show that they display mode volumes much smaller than a wavelength cube, owing to the deep subwavelength nature of the unit cell. We underline that this type of structure can be shrunk down to a period close of a few skin depth. Our approach paves the way towards the confinement and manipulation of waves at deep subwavelength scales in both ordered and disordered metamaterials.Comment: two columns version, 4 pages, 4 figure

Experimental scaling law for the sub-critical transition to turbulence in plane Poiseuille flow

We present an experimental study of transition to turbulence in a plane Poiseuille flow. Using a well-controlled perturbation, we analyse the flow using extensive Particule Image Velocimetry and flow visualisation (using Laser Induced Fluorescence) measurements and use the deformation of the mean velocity profile as a criterion to characterize the state of the flow. From a large parametric study, four different states are defined depending on the values of the Reynolds number and the amplitude of the perturbation. We discuss the role of coherent structures, like hairpin vortices, in the transition. We find that the minimal amplitude of the perturbation triggering transition scales like Re^-1

Exploiting spatiotemporal degrees of freedom for far field subwavelength focusing using time reversal in fractals

Materials which possess a high local density of states varying at a subwavelength scale theoretically permit to focus waves onto focal spots much smaller than the free space wavelength. To do so metamaterials -manmade composite media exhibiting properties not available in nature- are usually considered. However this approach is limited to narrow bandwidths due to their resonant nature. Here, we prove that it is possible to use a fractal resonator alongside time reversal to focus microwaves onto $\lambda/15$ subwavelength focal spots from the far field, on extremely wide bandwidths. We first numerically prove that this approach can be realized using a multiple channel time reversal mirror, that utilizes all the degrees of freedom offered by the fractal resonator. Then we experimentally demonstrate that this approach can be drastically simplified by coupling the fractal resonator to a complex medium, here a cavity, that efficiently converts its spatial degrees of freedom into temporal ones. This allows to achieve deep subwavelength focusing of microwaves using a single channel time reversal. Our method can be generalized to other systems coupling complex media and fractal resonators.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, one supplemental material fil