Zhang 2011
Zhang 2011
Zhang 2011
week ending
PRL 106, 024301 (2011) PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 14 JANUARY 2011
Recently, a new design paradigm called coordinate electromagnetic waves and acoustic waves in a two-
transformation has inspired a series of key explorations dimensional [2D] geometry. Yet, this 2D acoustic cloak
to manipulate, store, and control the flow of energy, in the requires anisotropic mass density which is not common in
form of either sound, elastic waves, or light radiation [1,2]. naturally occurring materials [25,26]. Consequently the
A set of novel optical devices was proposed based on experimental studies of acoustic cloak have been hampered
transformation optics [3–5]; they usually call for compli- by the difficulty in creating suitable materials and so far
cated medium with anisotropic and spatially varying per- remain challenging.
mittivity and permeability tensor to accomplish the desired In this Letter, we overcome the above challenges in
functionality. Recent advances in synthetic structured acoustic cloak design by introducing an acoustic trans-
metamaterial [6–8] whose properties are determined by mission line approach. The research on acoustic metama-
its subwavelength structure, offers the potential to physi- terial was first stimulated by the opportunity to develop
cally implement these complicated media. artificial media with negative material properties [27,28].
Among the most exciting examples is perhaps an elec- By taking the analogy between lumped acoustic elements
tromagnetic cloak that can render the objects invisible. The and electronic circuit elements, this transmission line (TL)
first experimental demonstration of such a cloak was re- approach enabled a new class of acoustic metamaterials
ported in microwave [9]. However, the invisibility effect [29] and ultrasound focusing through a metamaterial
was obtained only in a narrow frequency range because of network [30]. As a demonstration, we designed a 2D
the strong dispersion inherent to the resonant elements cylindrical cloak as shown in Fig. 1 in order to hide an
used to build the cloak. In addition, such resonances led object in the center. This acoustic cylindrical cloak is
to undesired material absorption in the cloak. To mitigate implemented by a 2D array of subwavelength cavities
these constraints, several different schemes of cloaking
utilizing nonresonant structure were proposed [10–14].
One example is a so-called carpet cloak [15,16]. How-
ever, the waves travel faster through the carpet cloak than
through the outer space, such a faster-than-light speed
thereby sets a fundamental restriction for broadband appli-
cation in ambient air.
In contrast, cloaking of other classical waves such as
acoustic waves does not suffer from such a limitation
for electromagnetic cloaks [17–19]. However, in general (a) (b)
the elastodynamic equations do not have this invariance FIG. 1 (color online). Schematic diagram of the experimental
symmetry [20]. Fortunately, acoustic waves in fluids setup. A burst of monotonic signal with a width of 20 periods
follow such form invariance and several theoretical was used to drive the transducer as an underwater point source in
schemes of transformation have been proposed [21–24]. the water tank. One needle-sized hydrophone detected the ultra-
Theoretical analysis of an acoustic cloak [24] was reported sonic signals in the immediate environment of (a) the object and
based on the equivalence between transverse electric (b) the cloaked object.
side of the cloak, demonstrating the low-loss nature of the obtained using a MATLAB program to process the experi-
metamaterial cloak based on transmission line model. mental data. To facilitate the comparison of the cloaking
To demonstrate the broadband nature of our designed performance, we defined the averaged visibility of an
P P Pmin;j
cloak, the acoustic wave field distributions at 52 and object as ¼ n1 nj¼1 j , where j ¼ Pmax;j
max;j þPmin;j
, Pmax;j
64 kHz are presented in Figs. 3(b), 3(c), 3(e), and 3(f)
and Pmin;j are the maximum and minimum peak values
for both cases with and without cloak. The field maps from
these measurements present similar cloaking behavior with along the wave front numbered by j. This can be compared
those at 60 kHz. This is not surprising since our metama- to the traditional measurement of so-called scattering
terial cloak is constructed by nonresonant elements. cross-sectional area, but performed for the convenience
Theoretically, the cloak is expected to operate over a of the near field measurement and limited field of view
wide frequency range of 40 to 80 kHz. The effectiveness in our experiment setup. Figure 4(a) shows one example of
of cloak at high frequency is restricted by two factors. The the measured peak pressure at 60 kHz along one wave front
first is the breakdown of the lumped circuit model when on the exit side of the object for both cases with and
the unit cell is comparable to one quarter of wavelength. without cloak. This wave front is near the boundary
The other limit is the cutoff frequency due to the low-pass of the cloak between y ¼ 100 mm and y ¼ 170 mm.
topology of the circuit network. However, in the current As reference, the measurement results for the free space
experiment we can only verify the cloaking behavior from when there are neither objects nor cloak in the water tank is
52 to 64 kHz due to the limited operating frequency range plotted. In Fig. 4(b), the averaged visibility of the cloaked
of the transducer. object over all the wave fronts on the exit side is compared
To further quantify the reduction of scattering and shad- with the one with only bare cylinder. The comparison
owing of the cloaked object, we conducted a set of mea- clearly indicates that the cloak preserves the obvious
surements over different frequencies. The peak values of shielding effectiveness over a broad frequency range. We
pressure along the wave fronts behind the cloak were can read the visibility of 0.62 for the bare steel cylinder,
FIG. 3 (color online). Measured pressure field mappings of the bare steel cylinder and the cloaked steel cylinder illuminated with a
point ultrasound source. The cloak lies in the center of the water tank and surrounds the steel cylinder. The scattering field patterns of
the bare steel cylinder at (a) 60 kHz (b) 52 kHz, and (c) 64 kHz. The pseudo–color maps in the immediate environment of the cloaked
steel cylinder at (d) 60 kHz (e) 52 kHz, and (f) 64 kHz.
024301-3
week ending
PRL 106, 024301 (2011) PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 14 JANUARY 2011
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supplemental/10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.024301 for the
details of the derivation of effective material parameters
and experimental setup.
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