Creation of acoustic vortex knots.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 32770024.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-17744-x and PMC identifier 7414909.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Knots and links have been conjectured to play a fundamental role in a wide range of scientific fields. Recently, tying isolated vortex knots in the complex optical field has been realized. However, how to construct the acoustic vortex knot is still an unknown problem. Here we propose theoretically and demonstrate experimentally the creation of acoustic vortex knots using metamaterials, with decoupled modulation of transmitted phase and amplitude. Based on the numerical simulation, we find that the knot function can be embedded into the acoustic field by designed metamaterials with only 24 × 24 pixels. Furthermore, using the optimized metamaterials, the acoustic fields with Hopf link and trefoil knot vortex lines have been observed experimentally.