Acoustic delay-line filters based on largely distorted topological insulators

The topological sound transport, as an interesting phenomenon discovered in sonic crystals, has drawn tremendous interest in recent years. Here, in resonant acoustic systems, we demonstrate the existence of band inversion by slightly changing the lengths of tube resonators, which unveils the acoustic valley Hall phase transition characterized by the inverted valley Chern number. However, when the valley topological insulator is largely distorted, we can obtain flat-band-like edge states in the bandgaps with topological protection still existing. Those edge states can propagate along zigzag delay-lines with the backscatterings suppressed to a large amount. Our work provides a prototype of topological-insulator-based acoustic devices with the frequency-selecting functionality. Published by AIP Publishing.