Frequency selective wave beaming in nonreciprocal acoustic phased arrays.

Acoustic phased arrays are capable of steering and focusing a beam of sound via selective coordination of the spatial distribution of phase angles between multiple sound emitters. Constrained by the principle of reciprocity, conventional phased arrays exhibit identical transmission and reception patterns which limit the scope of their operation. This work presents a controllable space-time acoustic phased array which breaks time-reversal symmetry, and enables phononic transition in both momentum and energy spaces. By leveraging a dynamic phase modulation, the proposed linear phased array is no longer bound by the acoustic reciprocity, and supports asymmetric transmission and reception patterns that can be tuned independently at multiple channels. A foundational framework is developed to characterize and interpret the emergent nonreciprocal phenomena and is later validated against benchmark numerical experiments. The new phased array selectively alters the directional and frequency content of the incident signal and imparts a frequency conversion between different wave fields, which is further analyzed as a function of the imposed modulation. The space-time acoustic phased array enables unprecedented control over sound waves in a variety of applications ranging from ultrasonic imaging to non-destructive testing and underwater SONAR telecommunication.

Modeling non-harmonic behavior of materials from experimental inelastic neutron scattering and thermal expansion measurements.

Based on thermodynamic principles, we derive expressions quantifying the non-harmonic vibrational behavior of materials, which are rigorous yet easily evaluated from experimentally available data for the thermal expansion coefficient and the phonon density of states. These experimentally-derived quantities are valuable to benchmark first-principles theoretical predictions of harmonic and non-harmonic thermal behaviors using perturbation theory, ab initio molecular-dynamics, or Monte-Carlo simulations. We illustrate this analysis by computing the harmonic, dilational, and anharmonic contributions to the entropy, internal energy, and free energy of elemental aluminum and the ordered compound [Formula: see text] over a wide range of temperature. Results agree well with previous data in the literature and provide an efficient approach to estimate anharmonic effects in materials.