Sub-wavelength focusing of acoustic waves in bubbly media

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate acoustic wave scattering by a large number of bubbles in a liquid at frequencies near the Minnaert resonance frequency. This bubbly media has been exploited in practice to obtain super-focusing of acoustic waves. Using layer potential techniques we derive the scattering function for a single spherical bubble excited by an incident wave in the low frequency regime. We then derive the point scatter approximation for multiple scattering by N bubbles. We describe several numerical experiments based on the point scatterer approximation that demonstrate the possibility of achieving super-focusing using bubbly media.