Acoustic tractor beam
Acoustic tractor beam
Negative radiation forces act opposite to the direction of propagation, or net momentum, of a beam but have previously been challenging to definitively demonstrate. We report an experimental acoustic tractor beam generated by an ultrasonic array operating on macroscopic targets (>1??cm) to demonstrate the negative radiation forces and to map out regimes over which they dominate, which we compare to simulations. The result and the geometrically simple configuration show that the effect is due to nonconservative forces, produced by redirection of a momentum flux from the angled sides of a target and not by conservative forces from a potential energy gradient. Use of a simple acoustic setup provides an easily understood illustration of the negative radiation pressure concept for tractor beams and demonstrates continuous attraction towards the source, against a net momentum flux in the system.
1-5
Démoré, Christine E.M.
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Dahl, Patrick M.
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Yang, Zhengyi
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Glynne-Jones, Peter
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Melzer, Andreas
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Cochran, Sandy
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MacDonald, Michael P.
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Spalding, Gabriel C.
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30 April 2014
Démoré, Christine E.M.
4bb7a334-3a61-4858-b386-10b3439ab962
Dahl, Patrick M.
2327cc73-f6ac-4857-8e07-4cc1fb746d72
Yang, Zhengyi
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Glynne-Jones, Peter
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Melzer, Andreas
84c00697-5508-484c-9b23-58ac77eaa8dd
Cochran, Sandy
9002d992-d724-4912-ac1c-ec9e82cfe9ed
MacDonald, Michael P.
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Spalding, Gabriel C.
2c9a8c1d-fb36-448c-a6df-01878bf56334
Démoré, Christine E.M., Dahl, Patrick M., Yang, Zhengyi, Glynne-Jones, Peter, Melzer, Andreas, Cochran, Sandy, MacDonald, Michael P. and Spalding, Gabriel C.
(2014)
Acoustic tractor beam.
Physical Review Letters, 112 (17), , [174302].
(doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.174302).
Abstract
Negative radiation forces act opposite to the direction of propagation, or net momentum, of a beam but have previously been challenging to definitively demonstrate. We report an experimental acoustic tractor beam generated by an ultrasonic array operating on macroscopic targets (>1??cm) to demonstrate the negative radiation forces and to map out regimes over which they dominate, which we compare to simulations. The result and the geometrically simple configuration show that the effect is due to nonconservative forces, produced by redirection of a momentum flux from the angled sides of a target and not by conservative forces from a potential energy gradient. Use of a simple acoustic setup provides an easily understood illustration of the negative radiation pressure concept for tractor beams and demonstrates continuous attraction towards the source, against a net momentum flux in the system.
Text
Demore-TractorBeam R2 - Accepted.pdf
- Author's Original
Other
PhysRevLett.112.174302
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Available under License Other.
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e-pub ahead of print date: 30 April 2014
Published date: 30 April 2014
Organisations:
Mechatronics
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 364597
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/364597
PURE UUID: 305553d6-5d16-4340-a44e-c3f6d02d1d05
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Date deposited: 27 May 2014 10:33
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:03
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Contributors
Author:
Christine E.M. Démoré
Author:
Patrick M. Dahl
Author:
Zhengyi Yang
Author:
Andreas Melzer
Author:
Sandy Cochran
Author:
Michael P. MacDonald
Author:
Gabriel C. Spalding
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