Acoustic coherent perfect absorbers

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the possibility of achieving acoustic coherent perfect absorbers. Through numerical simulations in two dimensions, we demonstrate that the energy of coherent acoustic waves can be totally absorbed by a fluid absorber with specific complex mass density or bulk modulus. The robustness of such absorbing systems is investigated under small perturbations of the absorber parameters. We find that when the resonance order is the lowest and the size of the absorber is comparable to the wavelength in the background, the phenomenon of perfect absorption is most stable. When the wavelength inside both the background and the absorber is much larger than the size of the absorber, perfect absorption is possible when the mass density of the absorber approaches the negative value of the background mass density. Finally, we show that by using suitable dispersive acoustic metamaterials, broadband acoustic perfect absorption may be achieved.