Analytical solutions for Bloch waves in resonant phononic crystals: Deep subwavelength energy splitting and mode steering between topologically protected interfacial and edge states

TL;DR

This paper develops analytical Green's function solutions for elastic plates with periodic beam arrays, enabling efficient design of topologically protected waveguiding states at deep subwavelength scales.

Contribution

It introduces a versatile analytical framework for modeling resonant phononic crystals, facilitating the engineering of topologically non-trivial states with simplified beam modeling.

Findings

Analytical solutions accurately predict wave dispersion and scattering.

Topologically protected states are realized at deep subwavelength frequencies.

The method is validated against finite element simulations.

Abstract

We derive analytical solutions based on singular Green's functions, which enable efficient computations of scattering simulations or Floquet-Bloch dispersion relations for waves propagating through an elastic plate, whose surface is patterned by periodic arrays of elastic beams. Our methodology is versatile and allows us to solve a range of problems regarding arrangements of multiple beams per primitive cell, over Bragg to deep-subwavelength scales; we cross-verify against finite element numerical simulations to gain further confidence in our approach, which relies upon the hypothesis of Euler-Bernoulli beam theory considerably simplifying continuity conditions such that each beam can be replaced by point forces and moments applied to the neutral plane of the plate. The representations of Green's functions by Fourier series or Fourier transforms readily follows, yielding rapid and accurate analytical schemes. The accuracy and flexibility of our solutions are demonstrated by engineering topologically non-trivial states, from primitive cells with broken spatial symmetries, following the phononic analogue of the Quantum Valley Hall Effect (QVHE). Topologically protected states are produced and coexist along: interfaces between adjoining chiral-mirrored bulk media and edges between one such chiral bulk and the surrounding bare elastic plate, allowing topological circuits to be designed with robust waveguiding; these topologically non-trivial states exist within near flexural resonances of the constituent beams of the phononic crystal, and hence can be tuned into a deep-subwavelength regime.