Project description:Invisibility cloaks have recently become a topic of considerable interest thanks to the theoretical works of transformation optics and conformal mapping. The design of the cloak involves extreme values of material properties and spatially dependent parameter tensors, which are very difficult to implement. The realization of an isolated invisibility cloak in the visible light, which is an important step towards achieving a fully movable invisibility cloak, has remained elusive. Here, we report the design and experimental demonstration of an isolated polygonal cloak for visible light. The cloak is made of several elements, whose electromagnetic parameters are designed by a linear homogeneous transformation method. Theoretical analysis shows the proposed cloak can be rendered invisible to the rays incident from all the directions. Using natural anisotropic materials, a simplified hexagonal cloak which works for six incident directions is fabricated for experimental demonstration. The performance is validated in a broadband visible spectrum.
Project description:We present active manipulation of the structural vibrations of an elastic body to generate an acoustic illusion. The resultant illusion misrepresents the nature, size and number of objects in the exterior acoustic domain. We demonstrate our technique, herein termed active structural acoustic illusion, using an elastic cylindrical shell. The radial motion of the shell at its cavity resonance frequencies is actively modified using localised mechanical forces. Acoustic illusions are generated to resemble the scattered acoustic field by one or more rigid cylinders of different size and location.
Project description:The invisibility cloak has been a long-standing dream for many researchers over the decades. Using transformation optics, a three-dimensional (3D) object is perceived as having a reduced number of dimensions, making it "undetectable" judging from the scattered field12345. Despite successful experimental demonstration at microwave and optical frequencies6789101112, the spectroscopically important Terahertz (THz) domain13141516 remains unexplored due to difficulties in fabricating cloaking devices that are optically large in all three dimensions. Here, we report the first experimental demonstration of a 3D THz cloaking device fabricated using a scalable Projection Microstereolithography process. The cloak operates at a broad frequency range between 0.3 and 0.6?THz, and is placed over an ?-lactose monohydrate absorber with rectangular shape. Characterized using angular-resolved reflection THz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS), the results indicate that the THz invisibility cloak has successfully concealed both the geometrical and spectroscopic signatures of the absorber, making it undetectable to the observer.
Project description:Causality of linear time-invariant systems inherently defines the wave-matter interaction process in wave physics. This principle imposes strict constraints on the interfacial response of materials on various physical platforms. A typical consequence is that a delicate balance has to be struck between the conflicting bandwidth and geometric thickness when constructing a medium with desired impedance, which makes it challenging to realize broadband impedance modulation with compact structures. In pursuit of improvement, the over-damped recipe and the reduced excessive response recipe are creatively presented in this work. As a proof-of-concept demonstration, we construct a metamaterial with intensive mode density that supports strong non-locality over a frequency band from 320 Hz to 6400 Hz. Under the guidelines of the over-damped recipe and the reduced excessive response recipe, the metamaterial realizes impedance matching to air and exhibits broadband near-perfect absorption without evident impedance oscillation and absorption dips in the working frequency band. We further present a dual-functional design capable of frequency-selective absorption and reflection by concentrating the resonance modes in three frequency bands. Our research reveals the significance of over-damped recipe and the strong non-local effect in broadband impedance modulation, which may open up avenues for constructing efficient artificial impedance boundaries for energy absorption and other wave manipulation.
Project description:One enduring challenge for controlling high frequency sound in local active noise control (ANC) systems is to obtain the acoustic signal at the specific location to be controlled. In some applications such as in ANC headrest systems, it is not practical to install error microphones in a person's ears to provide the user a quiet or optimally acoustically controlled environment. Many virtual error sensing approaches have been proposed to estimate the acoustic signal remotely with the current state-of-the-art method using an array of four microphones and a head tracking system to yield sound reduction up to 1 kHz for a single sound source. In the work reported in this paper, a novel approach of incorporating remote acoustic sensing using a laser Doppler vibrometer into an ANC headrest system is investigated. In this "virtual ANC headphone" system, a lightweight retro-reflective membrane pick-up is mounted in each synthetic ear of a head and torso simulator to determine the sound in the ear in real-time with minimal invasiveness. The membrane design and the effects of its location on the system performance are explored, the noise spectra in the ears without and with ANC for a variety of relevant primary sound fields are reported, and the performance of the system during head movements is demonstrated. The test results show that at least 10 dB sound attenuation can be realised in the ears over an extended frequency range (from 500 Hz to 6 kHz) under a complex sound field and for several common types of synthesised environmental noise, even in the presence of head motion.
Project description:As a superior self-protection strategy, invisibility has been a topic of long-standing interest in both academia and industry, because of its potential for intriguing applications that have only appeared thus far in science fiction. However, due to the strong dispersion of passive materials, achieving cross-wavelength invisibility remains an open challenge. Inspired by the natural ecological relationship between transparent midwater oceanic animals and the cross-wavelength detection strategy of their predators, we propose a cross-wavelength invisibility concept that integrates various invisibility tactics, where a Boolean metamaterial design procedure is presented to balance divergent material requirements over cross-scale wavelengths. As proof of concept, we experimentally demonstrate longwave cloaking and shortwave transparency simultaneously through a nanoimprinting technique. Our work extends the concept of stealth techniques from individual invisibility tactics targeting a single-wavelength spectrum to an integrated invisibility tactic targeting a cross-wavelength applications and may pave the way for development of cross-wavelength integrated metadevices.
Project description:A hybrid acoustic metamaterial is proposed as a new class of sound absorber, which exhibits superior broadband low-frequency sound absorption as well as excellent mechanical stiffness/strength. Based on the honeycomb-corrugation hybrid core (H-C hybrid core), we introduce perforations on both top facesheet and corrugation, forming perforated honeycomb-corrugation hybrid (PHCH) to gain super broadband low-frequency sound absorption. Applying the theory of micro-perforated panel (MPP), we establish a theoretical method to calculate the sound absorption coefficient of this new kind of metamaterial. Perfect sound absorption is found at just a few hundreds hertz with two-octave 0.5 absorption bandwidth. To verify this model, a finite element model is developed to calculate the absorption coefficient and analyze the viscous-thermal energy dissipation. It is found that viscous energy dissipation at perforation regions dominates the total energy consumed. This new kind of acoustic metamaterials show promising engineering applications, which can serve as multiple functional materials with extraordinary low-frequency sound absorption, excellent stiffness/strength and impact energy absorption.
Project description:High-quality broadband ultrasound transducers yield superior imaging performance in biomedical ultrasonography. However, proper design to perfectly bridge the energy between the active piezoelectric material and the target medium over the operating spectrum is still lacking. Here, we demonstrate a new anisotropic cone-structured acoustic metamaterial matching layer that acts as an inhomogeneous material with gradient acoustic impedance along the ultrasound propagation direction. When sandwiched between the piezoelectric material unit and the target medium, the acoustic metamaterial matching layer provides a broadband window to support extraordinary transmission of ultrasound over a wide frequency range. We fabricated the matching layer by etching the peeled silica optical fibre bundles with hydrofluoric acid solution. The experimental measurement of an ultrasound transducer equipped with this acoustic metamaterial matching layer shows that the corresponding -6 dB bandwidth is able to reach over 100%. This new material fully enables new high-end piezoelectric materials in the construction of high-performance ultrasound transducers and probes, leading to considerably improved resolutions in biomedical ultrasonography and compact harmonic imaging systems.
Project description:Perfect absorption is an interdisciplinary topic with a large number of applications, the challenge of which consists of broadening its inherently narrow frequency-band performance. We experimentally and analytically report perfect and broadband absorption for audible sound, by the mechanism of critical coupling, with a sub-wavelength multi-resonant scatterer (SMRS) made of a plate-resonator/closed waveguide structure. In order to introduce the role of the key parameters, we first present the case of a single resonant scatterer (SRS) made of a Helmholtz resonator/closed waveguide structure. In both cases the controlled balance between the energy leakage of the several resonances and the inherent losses of the system leads to perfect absorption peaks. In the case of the SMRS we show that systems with large inherent losses can be critically coupled using resonances with large leakage. In particular, we show that in the SMRS system, with a thickness of λ/12 and diameter of λ/7, several perfect absorption peaks overlap to produce absorption bigger than 93% for frequencies that extend over a factor of 2 in audible frequencies. The reported concepts and methodology provide guidelines for the design of broadband perfect absorbers which could contribute to solve the major issue of noise reduction.