An acoustic Maxwell’s fish-eye lens based on gradient-index metamaterials**Project supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2012CB921504), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11574148, 11474162, 1274171, 11674172, and 11674175), and the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education, China (Grant Nos. 20110091120040 and 20120091110001).

Abstract

We have proposed a two-dimensional acoustic Maxwell’s fish-eye lens by using the gradient-index metamaterials with space-coiling units. By adjusting the structural parameters of the units, the refractive index can be gradually varied, which is key role to design the acoustic fish-eye lens. As predicted by ray trajectories on a virtual sphere, the proposed lens has the capability to focus the acoustic wave irradiated from a point source at the surface of the lens on the diametrically opposite side of the lens. The broadband and low loss performance is further demonstrated for the lens. The proposed acoustic fish-eye lens is expected to have the potential applications in directional acoustic coupler or coherent ultrasonic imaging.