Non-Hermitian metamaterials and non-reciprocal metastructuras

Abstract

Non-Hermitian metamaterials is a topic of recent interest in phononics. On this work, different phenomena related to the dynamics of this class of metamaterials and its various configurations will be investigated. This research will be made in collaboration with Professor Massimo Ruzzene's research team, from University of Colorado in Boulder, who have been exploring this topic in the last few years. A segment of this study is the proposed construction of an experimental platform of a non-Hermitian acoustic system which has potential application in structural control as a mechanical waveguide with programmable dynamics. Regarding the metastructures build upon this metamaterials, typical control problems, such as instabilities, naturally emerge and can be explored having in mind their potential influence on experimental realizations of this class of systems, such as the one being proposed on this work. So far, these metastructures have not been investigated using more realistic, distributed parameters numerical models. The originality of this work relies on the possible combination of the former with experimental results and techniques from dynamical systems analysis.