Non-Hermitian Acoustic Metamaterials: the role of Exceptional Points in sound absorption

Effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonians are obtained to describe coherent perfect absorbing and lasing boundary conditions. PT -symmetry of the Hamiltonians enables to design configurations which perfectly absorb at multiple frequencies. Broadened and flat perfect absorption is predicted at the exceptional point of PT -symmetry breaking while, for a particular case, absorption is enhanced with the use of gain. The aforementioned phenomena are illustrated for acoustic scattering through Helmholtz resonators revealing how tailoring the non-Hermiticity of acoustic metamaterials leads to novel mechanisms for enhanced absorption

Acoustic characterization of Hofstadter butterfly with resonant scatterers

We are interested in the experimental characterization of the Hofstadter butterfly by means of acoustical waves. The transmission of an acoustic pulse through an array of 60 variable and resonant scatterers periodically distribued along a waveguide is studied. An arbitrary scattering arrangement is realized by using the variable length of each resonator cavity. For a periodic modulation, the structures of forbidden bands of the transmission reproduce the Hofstadter butterfly. We compare experimental, analytical, and computational realizations of the Hofstadter butterfly and we show the influence of the resonances of the scatterers on the structure of the butterfly

Wave propagation in a strongly disordered 1D phononic lattice supporting rotational waves

We investigate the dynamical properties of a strongly disordered micropolar lattice made up of cubic block units. This phononic lattice model supports both transverse and rotational degrees of freedom hence its disordered variant posses an interesting problem as it can be used to model physically important systems like beam-like microstructures. Different kinds of single site excitations (momentum or displacement) on the two degrees of freedom are found to lead to different energy transport both superdiffusive and subdiffusive. We show that the energy spreading is facilitated both by the low frequency extended waves and a set of high frequency modes located at the edge of the upper branch of the periodic case for any initial condition. However, the second moment of the energy distribution strongly depends on the initial condition and it is slower than the underlying one dimensional harmonic lattice (with one degree of freedom). Finally, a limiting case of the micropolar lattice is studied where Anderson localization is found to persist and no energy spreading takes place

Subwavelength Interferometric Control of Absorption in Three-port Acoustic Network

Utilizing the effect of losses, we show that symmetric 3-port devices exhibit coherent perfect absorption of waves and we provide the corresponding conditions on the reflection and transmission coefficients. Infinite combinations of asymmetric inputs with different amplitudes and phase at each port as well as a completely symmetric input, are found to be perfectly absorbed. To illustrate the above we study an acoustic 3-port network operating in a subwavelength frequency both theoretically and experimentally. In addition we show how the output from a 3-port network is altered, when conditions of perfect absorption are met but the input waves phase and amplitude vary. In that regard, we propose optimized structures which feature both perfect absorption and perfect transmission at the same frequency by tuning the amplitudes and phases of the input waves

Duality of bounded and scattering wave systems with local symmetries

We investigate the spectral properties of a class of hard-wall bounded systems, described by potentials exhibiting domain-wise different local symmetries. Tuning the distance of the domains with locally symmetric potential from the hard wall boundaries leads to extrema of the eigenenergies. The underlying wavefunction becomes then an eigenstate of the local symmetry transform in each of the domains of local symmetry. These extrema accumulate towards eigenenergies which do not depend on the position of the potentials inside the walls. They correspond to perfect transmission resonances of the associated scattering setup, obtained by removing the hard walls. We argue that this property characterizes the duality between scattering and bounded systems in the presence of local symmetries. Our findings are illustrated at hand of a numerical example with a potential consisting of two domains of local symmetry, each one comprised of Dirac ? barriers.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Acoustic solitons in waveguides with Helmholtz resonators: transmission line approach

We report experimental results and study theoretically soliton formation and propagation in an airfilled acoustic waveguide side loaded with Helmholtz resonators. Our theoretical approach relies on a transmission-line description of this setting, which leads to a nonlinear dynamical lattice model. The latter is treated analytically, by means of dynamical systems and multiscale expansion techniques, and leads to various soliton solutions for the pressure. These include Boussinesq-like and Korteweg-de Vries pulse-shaped solitons, as well as nonlinear Schr\"{o}odinger envelope solitons. The analytical predictions are in excellent agreement with direct numerical simulations and in qualitative agreement with the experimental observations.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure