A nonreciprocal and tunable active acoustic scatterer

Abstract

A passive loudspeaker mounted in a duct acts as a reciprocal scatterer for plane waves impinging on either of its sides. However, the reciprocity can be broken by means of an asymmetric electroacoustic feedback which supplies to the loudspeaker a signal picked-up from a microphone facing only one of its sides. This simple modification offers new opportunities for the control and manipulation of sound waves. In this paper, we investigate the scattering features of a pair of such actively controlled loudspeakers connected by means of a short and narrow duct. The theoretical and experimental results demonstrate that by tuning the feedback loops, the system exhibits several exotic effects, which include an asymmetric reflectionless configuration with one-way transmission or absorption, a directional amplifier with an isolation of 42 dB, and a quasi CPA-lasing configuration. All of these effects were achieved using a single setup in the subwavelength regime, highlighting the versatility of such an asymmetrically active scatterer.