Effective transmission of sound from water to air is crucial for the enhancement of the detection sensitivity of underwater sound. However, only 0.1% of the acoustic energy is naturally transmitted at such a boundary. At audio frequencies, quarter-wave plates or multilayered antireflection coatings are too bulky for practical use for such enhancement. Here we present an acoustic metasurface of a thickness of only ∼λ/100, where λ is the wavelength in air, consisting of an array of meta-atoms that each contain a set of membranes and an air-filled cavity. We experimentally demonstrate that such a meta-atom increases the transmission of sound at ∼700 Hz by 2 orders of magnitude, allowing about 30% of the incident acoustic power from water to be transmitted into air. Applications include underwater sonic sensing and communication.
The realization of phase discontinuities across metasurfaces has led to a new class of reflection and refraction. Here we present theory and experiment on the discontinuous propagation of wavepackets across subwavelength-thickness meta-atoms. Using acoustic waves, we observe the process of wavepackets traversing a meta-atom with abrupt displacements, which appear as path discontinuities on a space-time diagram. We construct a tunable meta-atom from two coupled resonators at ~500 Hz, map the spatiotemporal trajectories of individual sonic pulses, and reveal discontinuities at the meta-atom where the pulses exit at a time ~50 ms ahead or behind their arrivals. Applications include thin acoustic metasurface lenses.
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