We wish to congratulate Jingyi “Kelly” Zhang to become the newest Doctor of the PhonoMeta team. Jingyi has focused his research on topological defects, loss compensation and complex static mechanical deformations, for which he was bestowed the highest distinction summa cum laude. For his future academic endeavor we wish him all the success in the world.
Mechanical metamaterials, not even dealing with vibrations, but studying complex deformations was a new journey we embarked on. For years we were inspired by the bulk-boundary correspondence, now dealing with solid mechanical lattices, we developed the buckle-barrel correspondence: what happens when you compress an architected lattice a.k.a. a metamaterial? Will it buckle sideways, or barrel symmetrically? Topology does the trick: it defines whether the local units slide or rotate. And that local motion dictates the global deformation of the entire structure. A beautiful example of geometry, mechanics, and topology working together. Here is the publication.
We are very happy to present our work on a sonic C540 metamaterial where our Chinese friends from Nanjing made really great experiments. On a personal note, I am very proud to have collaborated with outstanding Spanish theoreticians such as Alberto Cortijo, María Vozmediano, and Paco Guinea who helped us understanding and applying the Gauge theory! Here is the publication.
My former postdoc Liyang and I teamed up with some old friends from NJU. We are very excited about that our progress in topological hyperbolic radiation got published in Advanced Materials. What we did not expect, was the selection for the cover story! We are happy and grateful. On to the next one!
With the gang at the Bola del Mundo in the Sierra de Guadarrama of Madrid. We were taken by surprise by the bad weather, fog and goats, but we sure had some fun. Ana was missing.
We are proud of Dr. María Rosendo López who has recently been granted an Outstanding Thesis Award at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid for her European Research Council (ERC) funded research into symmetry and topology in combination with sound and vibrations! Among her papers, she published two Phys. Rev. Lett. articles on 2nd order topology and twisted flat bands. We wish her all the best in her future adventures! 🎉 🥂
Jingyi “Kelly” standing shoulder to shoulder with the Terrones giants! Crazy topologies in the making!
Bin Liang had the idea to test Airy-Talbot waves with sound waves. For this we used spoof surface acoustic waves that I have worked on during my PhD. The Talbot effect is a classical phenomenon in optics discovered in 1836 in which near-field diffraction of a periodic structure replicates itself at a designated position referred to as the Talbot distance. Another prominent diffraction phenomenon is the Airy beam which displays a parabolic intensity bending of its main lobe with exceptional resilience against perturbations. This effect that was named after Sir George Biddel Airy, who derived the Airy integral in connection with optical caustics, has demonstrated its significance through the ability to direct sound along curved paths. I hope you enjoy reading our paper.
We are very happy to have our paper not only appearing in Phys. Rev. Lett., but also highlighted as an editor’s suggestion. Taken directly from the journal’s page: A novel acoustic Su-Schrieffer-Heeger chain with non-Hermitian components displays a non-Hermitian phase transition and reveals new acoustic topological interface states with tunable robust confinement.Breaking!! We update that Phys. Rev. Lett. selected our contribution as the cover story [👌]
The field of topological insulators is maturing, yet, four distinctive topics were identified, marking the focus of our review paper. Very happy that NATURE gave us this opportunity!
Happy to see that Zhiwang and Penglin are doing well. They were a visiting PhD scholar and a postdoc and are now faculty members at their universities in Nanjing and Shanghai.
What great experience it has been to learn on acoustic orbital angular momentum engineering. Thanks to my friends Ying and Bin from NJU! Here is the The European Commission considers our efforts a success story! Many thanks for this! More importantly, many thanks to our PhDs and Postdocs!
Here is the story, link: ec.europa.eu.
Nature 597, 655 (2021).
Link to the paper: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03833-4
Summary published in Science & Vie (monthly science magazine published in France).
Here is the acoustic answer to a Faraday cage – excited to have this published in Phys. Rev. Lett. as an editors’ choice with Yun Lai and Nick Fang!
We found the acoustic analogy of the Förster resonance energy transfer between donors and acceptors! After a hard fought battle (rejected in PRL and AFM) the paper will soon appear in Nat. Comm. Image taken from: DOI:10.3390/ijms131114929
Today we published a News and Views in Nature Nanotechnology where we discuss how topological defects using a man-made vortex can trap either light or sound!
Nature’s Communications Physics journal has been around not even two years, and it’s first review article, yes, our Topological sound contribution is the second highest cited paper of this journal! 💪
