Experimental Observation of Topologically Protected Helical Edge Modes in Patterned Elastic Plates

By M. Miniaci, R. Pal, B. Morvan, Massimo Ruzzene. Physical Review X, 2018

223 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The investigation of topologically protected waves in classical media has opened unique opportunities to achieve exotic properties like one-way phonon transport, protection from backscattering and immunity to imperfections. Contrary to acoustic and electromagnetic domains, their observation in elastic solids has so far been elusive due to the presence of both shear and longitudinal modes and their modal conversion at interfaces and free surfaces. Here we report the experimental observation of topologically protected helical edge waves in elastic media. The considered structure consists of an elastic plate patterned according to a Kagome architecture with an accidental degeneracy of two Dirac cones induced by drilling through holes. The careful breaking of symmetries couples the corresponding elastic modes which effectively emulates spin orbital coupling in the quantum spin Hall effect. The results shed light on the topological properties of the proposed plate waveguide and opens avenues for the practical realization of compact, passive and cost-effective elastic topological waveguides.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c1fcdcca30a42de38987c17c5e8377384ead883a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. R. Fleury
2. Andrea Alù
3. N. J. Gerard
4. Yun Jing
5. Chiara Daraio
6. Andrew N. Norris
7. Yuanchen Deng
8. Massimo Ruzzene

In Materials Chemistry

1. Chiara Daraio
2. Andrea Alù
3. Andrew N. Norris
4. Massimo Ruzzene
5. Guoliang Huang

Citations in the corpus

• Nonreciprocity in acoustic and elastic materials (2020, background): “The results in REF 83 have also provided guidelines for the experimental demonstration of a QSHE analog in the form of a continuous elastic plate 106 .”
• Topological phases in acoustic and mechanical systems (2019, unknown): “Panel d is adapted from ReF.(78), CC-BY-4.”
• Tailoring Structure‐Borne Sound through Bandgap Engineering in Phononic Crystals and Metamaterials: A Comprehensive Review (2022, background): “This mechanism of mode polarizations was soon introduced to multiple elastic platforms such as elastic plates [165,265,266], spring-mass systems [277], and granular media [278], with”