Sound and light under control
2005/05/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria
Sonic or fononic glass is the acoustic equivalent of photonic glass. That is to say, in photonic crystals, changing the refractive index, the light is allowed to pass the desired wavelength and not to that of another wavelength. The same has been achieved with the sound: changing the characteristics of the crystal, the sound of the desired frequency is allowed in and not of other frequencies.
For the realization of this special glass cylinders of a material have been introduced in another zone, so that the range of frequencies that lets pass the crystal depends on the periodicity of the cylinders. By decreasing the periodicity, the interval moves at high frequencies. In hisonic frequencies, between 1 and 100 gigas, the periodicity is similar to that of the wavelength of the visible light. This means that the crystal lets the desired photonic and phononic interval pass simultaneously.
The research was conducted jointly by MIT, the University of Crete and the Max Planck Institute. In your opinion, sonic crystals can have multiple applications, such as noise reduction in electronic circuits, control of heat flow in nanostructures, and interaction of light and sound waves in materials.
