Solid-solid phononic crystal with strongly time-modulated elastic constituents

A spatially periodic structure of heterogeneous elastic rods that periodically oscillate along their axes is proposed as a time-modulated phononic crystal. Each rod is a bi-material cylinder, consisting of periodically distributed slices with significantly different elastic properties. The rods are imbedded in an elastic matrix. Using a plane wave expansion, it is shown that the dispersion equation for sound waves is obtained from the solutions of a quadratic eigenvalue problem over the eigenfrequency ω. The coefficients of the corresponding quadratic polynomial are represented by infinite matrices defined in the space spanned by the reciprocal lattice vectors, where elements depend on the velocity of translation motion of the rods and Bloch vector k. The calculated band structure exhibits both ω and k bandgaps. If a frequency gap overlaps with a momentum gap, a mixed gap is formed. Within a mixed gap, ω and k acquire imaginary parts. A method of analysis of the dispersion equation in complex ω-k space is proposed. As a result of the high elastic contrast between the materials in the bi-material rods, a substantial depth of modulation is achieved, leading to a large gap to midgap ratio for the frequency, momentum, and mixed bandgaps.