We report the experimental realization of acoustic coherent perfect absorption (CPA) of four symmetric scatterers of very different structures. The only conditions necessary for these scatterers to exhibit CPA are that both the reflection and transmission amplitudes of the scatterers are 0.5 under one incident wave, and there are two collinear and counter-propagating incident waves with appropriate relative amplitude and phase. Nearly 1000 times in the modulation of output power has been demonstrated by changing the relative phase of the incident waves over 180{deg}. We further demonstrate that these scatterers are sensitive devices to detect the small differences between two nearly equal incident waves. A 27 % change in the strength of the scattering wave has been demonstrated for every degree of phase deviation from the optimum condition between the incident waves.
We report experimental and theoretical investigations of coherent perfect channeling (CPC), a process that two incoming coherent waves in waveguides are completely channeled into one or two other waveguides with little energy dissipation via strong coherent interaction between the two waves mediated by a deep subwavelength dimension scatterer at the common junction of the waveguides. Two such scatterers for acoustic waves are discovered, one confirmed by experiments and the other predicted by theory, and their scattering matrices are formulated. Scatterers with other CPC scattering matrices are explored, and preliminary investigations of their properties are conducted. The scattering matrix formulism makes it possible to extend the applicable domain of CPC to other scalar waves, such as electromagnetic waves and quantum wavefunctions.
Coherent perfect absorption (CPA), also known as time-reversed laser, is a wave phenomenon resulting from the reciprocity of destructive interference of transmitted and reflected waves. In this work we consider quasi one-dimensional lattice networks which posses at least one flat band, and show that CPA and lasing can be induced in both linear and nonlinear regimes of this lattice by fine-tuning non-Hermitian defects (dissipative terms localized within one unit-cell). We show that local dissipations that yield CPA simultaneously yield novel dissipative compact solutions of the lattice, whose growth or decay in time can be fine-tuned via the dissipation parameter. The scheme used to numerically visualize the theoretical findings offers a novel platform for the experimental implementation of these phenomena in optical devices.
We examine acoustic radiation force and torque on a small (subwavelength) absorbing isotropic particle immersed in a monochromatic (but generally inhomogeneous) sound-wave field. We show that by introducing the monopole and dipole polarizabilities of the particle, the problem can be treated in a way similar to the well-studied optical forces and torques on dipole Rayleigh particles. We derive simple analytical expressions for the acoustic force (including both the gradient and scattering forces) and torque. Importantly, these expressions reveal intimate relations to the fundamental field properties introduced recently for acoustic fields: the canonical momentum and spin angular momentum densities. We compare our analytical results with previous calculations and exact numerical simulations. We also consider an important example of a particle in an evanescent acoustic wave, which exhibits the mutually-orthogonal scattering (radiation-pressure) force, gradient force, and torque from the transverse spin of the field.
We theoretically study the conditions under which two laser fields can undergo Coherent Perfect Absorption (CPA) when shined on a single-mode bi-directional optical cavity coupled with two two- level quantum emitters (natural atoms, artificial atoms, quantum dots, qubits, etc.). In addition to being indirectly coupled through the cavity-mediated field, in our Tavis-Cummings model the two quantum emitters (QEs) are allowed to interact directly via the dipole-dipole interaction (DDI). Under the mean-field approximation and low-excitation assumption, in this work, we particularly focus on the impact of DDI on the existence of CPA in the presence of decoherence mechanisms (spontaneous emission from the QEs and the leakage of photons from the cavity walls). We also present a dressed-state analysis of the problem to discuss the underlying physics related to the allowed polariton state transitions in the Jaynes-Tavis-Cummings ladder. As a key result, we find that in the strong-coupling regime of cavity quantum electrodynamics, the strong DDI and the emitter-cavity detuning can act together to achieve the CPA at two laser frequencies tunable by the inter-atomic separation which are not possible to attain with a single QE in the presence of detuning. Our CPA results are potentially applicable in building quantum memories that are an essential component in long-distance quantum networking.
Recently, it was shown that surface electromagnetic waves at interfaces between continuous homogeneous media (e.g., surface plasmon-polaritons at metal-dielectric interfaces) have a topological origin [K. Y. Bliokh et al., Nat. Commun. 10, 580 (2019)]. This is explained by the nontrivial topology of the non-Hermitian photon helicity operator in the Weyl-like representation of Maxwell equations. Here we analyze another type of classical waves: longitudinal acoustic waves corresponding to spinless phonons. We show that surface acoustic waves, which appear at interfaces between media with opposite-sign densities, can be explained by similar topological features and the bulk-boundary correspondence. However, in contrast to photons, the topological properties of sound waves originate from the non-Hermitian four-momentum operator in the Klein-Gordon representation of acoustic fields.