Guiding and bending of acoustic waves in highly confined phononic crystal waveguides

We demonstrate experimentally the guiding and the bending of acoustic waves in highly confined waveguides formed by removing rods from a periodic two-dimensional lattice of steel cylinders immersed in water. Full transmission is observed for a one-period-wide straight waveguide within the full band gap of the perfect phononic crystal. However, when the waveguide width is doubled, destructive interference causes the transmission to vanish in the center of the passband. Waveguiding over a wide frequency range is obtained for a one-period-wide waveguide with two sharp 90degrees bends. Finite-difference time-domain computations are found to be in good agreement with the measurements. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.