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Acoustic topological insulator and robust one-way sound transport

Nature Physics volume 12, pages 1124–1129 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Topological design of materials enables topological symmetries and facilitates unique backscattering-immune wave transport1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26. In airborne acoustics, however, the intrinsic longitudinal nature of sound polarization makes the use of the conventional spin–orbital interaction mechanism impossible for achieving band inversion. The topological gauge flux is then typically introduced with a moving background in theoretical models19,20,21,22. Its practical implementation is a serious challenge, though, due to inherent dynamic instabilities and noise. Here we realize the inversion of acoustic energy bands at a double Dirac cone15,27,28 and provide an experimental demonstration of an acoustic topological insulator. By manipulating the hopping interaction of neighbouring ’atoms’ in this new topological material, we successfully demonstrate the acoustic quantum spin Hall effect, characterized by robust pseudospin-dependent one-way edge sound transport. Our results are promising for the exploration of new routes for experimentally studying topological phenomena and related applications, for example, sound-noise reduction.

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Figure 1: Schematic of the acoustic insulator and band inversion process.
Figure 2: Acoustic one-way spin-dependent transport.
Figure 3: Robust one-way sound transport.

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Acknowledgements

The work was jointly supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2012CB921503, 2013CB632904 and 2013CB632702) and the National Nature Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11134006, No. 11474158, and No. 11404164). M.-H.L. also acknowledges the support of the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20140019) and the support from the Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education (PAPD).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures & Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210093, China

    Cheng He, Xu Ni, Hao Ge, Xiao-Chen Sun, Yan-Bin Chen, Ming-Hui Lu, Xiao-Ping Liu & Yan-Feng Chen

  2. Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210093, China

    Cheng He, Ming-Hui Lu, Xiao-Ping Liu & Yan-Feng Chen

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  1. Cheng He
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  2. Xu Ni
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  3. Hao Ge
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Contributions

C.H., M.-H.L. and X.-P.L. conceived the idea. C.H. performed the numerical simulation and fabricated the samples. C.H., X.N. and H.G. carried out the experimental measurements. All the authors contributed to discussion of the results and manuscript preparation. M.-H.L., X.-P.L. and Y.-F.C. supervised all aspects of this work and managed this project.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Ming-Hui Lu, Xiao-Ping Liu or Yan-Feng Chen.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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He, C., Ni, X., Ge, H. et al. Acoustic topological insulator and robust one-way sound transport. Nature Phys 12, 1124–1129 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3867

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