Constant-pressure sound waves in non-Hermitian disordered media

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that adding a gain-loss distribution to a disordered acoustic medium can create reflectionless, constant-amplitude sound waves, enabling perfect transmission and suppression of intensity variations in a realistic system.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental realization of non-Hermitian acoustic media achieving reflectionless, constant-amplitude waves through active gain-loss control.

Findings

Successful implementation of non-Hermitian acoustic waveguide with active gain-loss control

Creation of reflectionless, constant-amplitude pressure waves in a disordered medium

Potential applications in sound engineering and non-Hermitian photonics

Abstract

When waves impinge on a disordered material they are back-scattered and form a highly complex interference pattern. Suppressing any such distortions in the free propagation of a wave is a challenging task with many applications in a number of different disciplines. In a recent theoretical proposal, it was pointed out that both perfect transmission through disorder as well as a complete suppression of any variation in a wave intensity can be achieved by adding a continuous gain-loss distribution to the disorder. Here we show that this abstract concept can be implemented in a realistic acoustic system. Our prototype consists of an acoustic waveguide containing several inclusions that scatter the incoming wave in a passive configuration and provide the gain or loss when being actively controlled. Our measurements on this non-Hermitian acoustic metamaterial demonstrate unambiguously the creation of a reflectionless scattering wave state that features a unique form of discrete constant-amplitude pressure waves. In addition to demonstrating that gain-loss additions can turn localised systems into transparent ones, we expect our proof-of-principle demonstration to trigger interesting new developments not only in sound engineering, but also in other related fields such as in non-Hermitian photonics.