Acoustic analogue of electronic BLOCH oscillations and resonant Zener tunneling in ultrasonic superlattices

Phys Rev Lett. 2007 Mar 30;98(13):134301. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.134301. Epub 2007 Mar 29.

Abstract

We demonstrate the existence of Bloch oscillations of acoustic fields in sound propagation through a superlattice of water cavities and layers of methyl methacrylate. To obtain the acoustic equivalent of a Wannier-Stark ladder, we employ a set of cavities with different thicknesses. Bloch oscillations are observed as time-resolved oscillations of transmission in a direct analogy to electronic Bloch oscillations in biased semiconductor superlattices. Moreover, for a particular gradient of cavity thicknesses, an overlap of two acoustic minibands occurs, which results in resonant Zener-like transmission enhancement.