Subwavelength localized modes for acoustic waves in bubbly crystals with a defect

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how to create and analyze localized acoustic modes in bubbly crystals with defects, leveraging subwavelength bandgap phenomena to achieve deeply subwavelength cavity resonances.

Contribution

It introduces a method to induce and study localized modes in bubbly phononic crystals by perturbing a single bubble, exploiting subwavelength bandgap properties.

Findings

Localized eigenmodes are achieved near the defect bubble.

Subwavelength cavities can be realized in bubbly crystals.

Analytical and numerical methods confirm the existence of these modes.

Abstract

The ability to control wave propagation is of fundamental interest in many areas of physics. Photonic and phononic crystals have proved very useful for this purpose but, because they are based on Bragg interference, these artificial media require structures with large dimensions. In [Ammari et al., Subwavelength phononic bandgap opening in bubbly media, J. Diff. Eq., 263 (2017), 5610--5629], it has been proved that a subwavelength bandgap opening occurs in bubbly phononic crystals. To demonstrate the opening of a subwavelength phononic bandgap, a periodic arrangement of bubbles is considered and their subwavelength Minnaert resonance is exploited. In this paper, this subwavelength bandgap is used to demonstrate cavities, very similar to those obtained in photonic and phononic crystals, albeit of deeply subwavelength dimensions. The key idea is to perturb the size of a single bubble inside the crystal, thus creating a defect. The goal is then to analytically and numerically show that this crystal has a localized eigenmode close to the defect bubble.