Symmetrical and anti-symmetrical coherent perfect absorption for acoustic waves

We investigate tunable acoustic absorption enabled by the coherent control of input waves. It relies on coherent perfect absorption originally proposed in optics. By designing appropriate acoustic metamaterial structures with resonating effective bulk modulus or density, we show that complete absorption of incident waves impinging on the metamaterial can be achieved for either symmetrical or anti-symmetrical inputs in the forward and backward directions. By adjusting the relative phase between the two incident beams, absorption can be tuned effectively from unity to zero, making coherent control useful in applications like acoustic modulators, noise controllers, transducers, and switches. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.