Acoustic Imaging with Metamaterial Luneburg Lenses

Yangbo Xie; Yangyang Fu; Zhetao Jia; Junfei Li; Chen Shen; Yadong Xu; Huanyang Chen; Steven A Cummer

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-34581-7

Acoustic Imaging with Metamaterial Luneburg Lenses

Sci Rep. 2018 Nov 1;8(1):16188. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-34581-7.

Authors

Yangbo Xie¹, Yangyang Fu^{1

2

3

4}, Zhetao Jia¹, Junfei Li¹, Chen Shen¹, Yadong Xu³, Huanyang Chen⁵, Steven A Cummer⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, 27708, USA.
² Institute of Electromagnetics and Acoustics and Department of Electronic Science, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China.
³ College of Physics, Optoelectronics and Energy, Soochow University, No.1 Shizi Street, Suzhou, 215006, China.
⁴ College of Science, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 211106, China.
⁵ Institute of Electromagnetics and Acoustics and Department of Electronic Science, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China. kenyon@xmu.edu.cn.
⁶ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, 27708, USA. cummer@ee.duke.edu.

Abstract

The Luneburg lens is a spherically symmetrical gradient refractive index (GRIN) device with unique imaging properties. Its wide field-of-view (FoV) and minimal aberration have lead it to be successfully applied in microwave antennas. However, only limited realizations have been demonstrated in acoustics. Previously proposed acoustic Luneburg lenses are mostly limited to inherently two-dimensional designs at frequencies from 1 kHz to 7 kHz. In this paper, we apply a new design method for scalable and self-supporting metamaterials to demonstrate Luneburg lenses for airborne sound and ultrasonic waves. Two Luneburg lenses are fabricated: a 2.5D ultrasonic version for 40 kHz and a 3D version for 8 kHz sound. Imaging performance of the ultrasonic version is experimentally demonstrated.

Abstract

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