Spiral sound-diffusing metasurfaces based on holographic vortices

Abstract

In this work, we show that scattered acoustic vortices generated by metasurfaces with chiral symmetry present broadband unusual properties in the far-field. These metasurfaces are designed to encode the holographic field of an acoustical vortex, resulting in structures with spiral geometry. In the near field, phase dislocations with tuned topological charge emerge when the scattered waves interference destructively along the axis of the spiral metasurface. In the far field, metasurfaces based on holographic vortices inhibit specular reflections because all scattered waves also interfere destructively in the normal direction. In addition, the scattering function in the far field is unusually uniform because the reflected waves diverge spherically from the holographic focal point. In this way, by triggering vorticity, energy can be evenly reflected in all directions except to the normal. As a consequence, the designed metasurface presents a mean correlation-scattering coefficient of 0.99 (0.98 in experiments) and a mean normalized diffusion coefficient of 0.73 (0.76 in experiments) over a 4 octave frequency band. The singular features of the resulting metasurfaces with chiral geometry allow the simultaneous generation of broadband, diffuse and non-specular scattering. These three exceptional features make spiral metasurfaces extraordinary candidates for controlling acoustic scattering and generating diffuse sound reflections in several applications and branches of wave physics as underwater acoustics, biomedical ultrasound, particle manipulation devices or room acoustics.