Transients and multiperiodic responses: a hierarchy of material bits

TL;DR

This paper introduces togglerons as fundamental multiperiodic elements in disordered materials, enabling the design of metamaterials with complex transient and periodic responses, advancing the understanding of frustrated media.

Contribution

It presents the experimental realization of togglerons as building blocks for multiperiodic responses in metamaterials, offering a new design strategy for complex sequential materials.

Findings

Togglerons can produce tunable transients and odd-period responses.

Metamaterials with togglerons exhibit hierarchical complex behaviors.

The approach enables rational design of materials with specific dynamic responses.

Abstract

When cyclically driven, certain disordered materials exhibit transient and multiperiodic responses that are difficult to reproduce in synthetic materials. Here, we show that elementary multiperiodic elements with period T=2, togglerons, can serve as building blocks for such responses. We experimentally realize metamaterials composed of togglerons with tunable transients and periodic responses - including odd periods. Our approach suggests a hierarchy of increasingly complex elements in frustrated media, and opens a new strategy for rational design of sequential metamaterials.