Demo: How sound can be transmitted through vacuum
Sound waves tunneling across a vacuum gap.
Credit: Zhuoran Geng and Ilari Maasilta
A classic movie was once promoted with the punchline: ”In space, no one can hear you scream”. Physicists Zhuoran Geng and Ilari Maasilta from the Nanoscience Center at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, have demonstrated, on the contrary, that in certain situations sound can be transmitted strongly across a vacuum region!
In a recent publication they show that in some cases a sound wave can jump or “tunnel” fully across a vacuum gap between two solids if the materials in question are piezoelectric. In such materials, vibrations (sound waves) produce an electrical response, as well, and since an electric field can exist in vacuum, it can transmit the sound waves across. The requirement is that the size of the gap is smaller than the wavelength of the sound wave. This effect works not only in audio range of frequencies (Hz-kHz), but also in ultrasound (MHz) and hypersound (GHz) frequencies, as long as the vacuum gap is made smaller as the frequencies increase.
– In most cases the effect is small, but we also found situations, where the full energy of the wave jumps across the vacuum with 100 % efficiency, without any reflections. As such, the phenomenon could find applications in microelectromechanical components (MEMS, smartphone technology) and in the control of heat, says professor Ilari Maasilta from the Nanoscience Center at the University of Jyväskylä.
The study was funded by the Academy of Finland and European Union’s Horizon 2020 program, and was published in the journal Communications Physics, on 15th July 2023.
Additional information:
- Professor Ilari Maasilta, +358 40 805 4098, maasilta@jyu.fi
- Publication: Complete tunneling of acoustic waves between piezoelectric crystals, Communications Physics, 6, Article number: 178 (2023)
- Link to the article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42005-023-01293-y
Journal: Communications Physics
DOI: 10.1038/s42005-023-01293-y
Method of Research: News article
Subject of Research: Not applicable
Article Title: Complete tunneling of acoustic waves between piezoelectric crystals
Article Publication Date: 15-Jul-2023
All latest news from the category: Physics and Astronomy
This area deals with the fundamental laws and building blocks of nature and how they interact, the properties and the behavior of matter, and research into space and time and their structures.
innovations-report provides in-depth reports and articles on subjects such as astrophysics, laser technologies, nuclear, quantum, particle and solid-state physics, nanotechnologies, planetary research and findings (Mars, Venus) and developments related to the Hubble Telescope.
Newest articles
Multiple Sclerosis: Early Warnings in the Immune System
LMU researchers demonstrate that certain immune cells already play an important role in the early stages of multiple sclerosis. The researchers compared the CD8 T cells of monozygotic twin pairs,…
Quantum communication: using microwaves to efficiently control diamond qubits
Major breakthrough for the development of diamond-based quantum computers. Quantum computers and quantum communication are pioneering technologies for data processing and transmission that is much faster and more secure than…
Logic with light
Introducing diffraction casting, optical-based parallel computing. Increasingly complex applications such as artificial intelligence require ever more powerful and power-hungry computers to run. Optical computing is a proposed solution to increase…
