Time-reversal inside a granular suspension to probe ultrasound diffusion

Abraham, Yamil - van Tiggelen, Bart A. - Benech, Nicolás - Negreira, Carlos - Jia, Xiaoping - Tourin, Arnaud

Resumen:

We demonstrate that ultrasound diffusion—typically associated with the transport of average wave energy and the breaking of time-reversal symmetry—can nonetheless be revealed through a time-reversal experiment. This is achieved using an unprecedented configuration: A single piezoelectric transducer, acting as a time-reversal mirror (TRM), is buried deep inside a strongly scattering medium (a dense granular suspension), while an array of transducers is positioned at a distance, outside the scattering region. A short pulse is emitted by a single array element and the TRM records the resulting ultrasonic field, composed of a coherent ballistic wave followed by a diffuse coda wave. When the entire coda is time-reversed and re-emitted from the TRM, the wave refocuses at the original source with a focal spot size that decreases with the inverse of the TRM depth, consistent with diffusive transport. By time-reversing short coda segments at increasing times 𝑡, we observe a focal spot size scaling as 1/√𝐷⁢𝑡, where 𝐷 is the ultrasound diffusion coefficient. Fitting this evolution with a microscopic diffusion model allows us to extract 𝐷. Remarkably, this measurement does not require ensemble averaging, because of the inherent stability of time-reversal against statistical fluctuations.

Detalles Bibliográficos
2025
Acoustic wave phenomena
Ballistic transport
Diffusion
Geometrical and wave optics
Granular packing
Mesoscopics
Ultrasound attenuation
Wave scattering
Ultrasound techniques
Inglés
Universidad de la República
COLIBRI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12008/53923
Acceso abierto
Licencia Creative Commons Atribución (CC - By 4.0)