Analysis of the Robustness of Conventional and Topologically Protected Edge States in Phononic Crystal Plates

TL;DR

This paper compares the robustness of topologically protected and conventional interface acoustic states in phononic crystal plates, highlighting their different behaviors under disorder and defects, and their implications for wave transport.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical analysis of the robustness and limitations of topologically protected versus conventional interface states in phononic crystals, including effects of disorder and geometric configurations.

Findings

Topologically protected states are robust against sharp corners and some disorder.

Conventional states suffer back scattering and localization under defects and disorder.

Protection of topological states requires specific geometric conditions, unlike conventional states.

Abstract

In this work we theoretically study the interface acoustic states of resonators on a thin plate with topologically protected and conventional designs. Topologically protected interface state is first analyzed by employing the conception of breaking inversion symmetry within the unit cell of a honeycomb lattice for cylindrical and spherical resonators; we further demonstrate the robustness of the wave propagation along a zig-zag path containing sharp corners, defect and disorder. The wave propagation ceases to be preserved if we increase the degree of disorder along the zig-zag path. In parallel, the conventional interface state is also designed and compared to the same situations. We found that the conventional interface state suffers back scattering in the zig-zag path while it can show a more confined wave transport in some cases. The presence of a defect along the propagation path scatters the conventional interface wave and in particular can prohibit a full propagation in presence of a localized state at the defect. If the zig-zag path is made disordered, the propagation of the conventional interface mode can be conserved at given frequencies for a low random degree and disappears for higher random degree as the interface bands become flat in dispersion and turn to localized states. Finally, we show that the immunity of the topologically protected design needs the interface to be surrounded by at least two hexagons of the phononic crystals on both sides, especially at the sharp corners in the zig-zag path, while the conventional design only needs one hexagon bulk media with the advantage of compact wave transport. This work puts a step forward for the interface states in micro-/nano-scale characterization and figures out the behaviors for both topologically protected and conventional interface states.