Acoustic suppressed topological refraction in valley sonic crystals

Abstract

We report both experimentally and numerically that an acoustic suppressed topological refraction is realized by two kagome-lattice valley sonic crystals (VSCs). By simply rotating triangle rods in the VSCs, acoustic valley Hall phase transitions can be obtained. In a designed topological waveguide composed of two VSCs with distinct valley topological phases, two types of valley edge states can be observed in the domain wall. Furthermore, the topological waveguide can support a suppressed topological refraction of sound, which arises from the excitation of an acoustic dipole mode at the exit of the domain wall. Such a phenomenon is experimentally demonstrated by scanning topological refractions of the edge states from a zigzag termination, in which the theoretical prediction of a negative refraction almost overlaps with the perpendicular bisector of the dipole mode, and thus it is suppressed totally. Finally, the robustness of the suppressed topological refraction is demonstrated experimentally. Our work can find potential applications in designing the devices of robust directional sound transports and communications.

Keywords

• acoustic topological insulator
• topological refraction
• valley
• sonic crystal