Quick search Find article
Quick search
Find article
Deutsche Physikalische Gessellschaft IOP Institute of Physics

An acoustic spanner and its associated rotational Doppler shift

K D Skeldon, C Wilson, M Edgar and M J Padgett1

Show affiliations


Light carries a spin angular momentum associated with its polarization and an orbital angular momentum arising from its phase cross-section. Sound, being a longitudinal wave, carries no spin component but can carry an orbital component of angular momentum when endowed with an appropriate phase structure. Here, we use a circular array of loudspeakers driven at a common angular frequency ωs but with an azimuthally changing phase delay to create a sound wave with helical phase fronts described by exp (iℓθ). Such waves are predicted to have an orbital angular momentum to energy ratio of ℓ/ωs. We confirm this angular momentum content by measuring its transfer to a suspended 60 cm diameter acoustic absorbing tile. The resulting torque on the tile (~6.1×10−6 Nm) is measured from observation of the motion for various torsional pendulums. Furthermore, we confirm the helical nature of the acoustic beam by observing the rotational Doppler shift, which results from a rotation between source and observer of angular velocity ωr. We measure Doppler shifted frequencies of ωs±ℓωr depending on the direction of relative rotation.


PACS

43.35.Gk Phonons in crystal lattices, quantum acoustics

Subjects

Condensed matter: structural, mechanical & thermal

Dates

Issue 1 (January 2008)

Received 17 September 2007

Published 21 January 2008



Related review articles

What's this?
View review articles related to this research to gain an insight into the key trends in this subject area. Related review articles are selected based on PACS/MSC codes, and are no more than three years old.

  1. Spin wave acoustics of antiferromagnetic structures as magnetoacoustic metamaterials

View by subject




Export








Please login to access our web services, or create an account if you don't yet have one.

You must have cookies enabled in your web browser to be able to login.

Username
Password

Forgotten your password? Get a new one here.