ProCoMedia

This project aims at the control of wave properties through the control of disorder, an objective that can be achieved with waves that propagate in macroscopic media. It builds on a fruitful Chilean-French collaboration that goes back ten years, that has provided a solid theoretical backbone to our understanding of wave propagation in complex media. In addition, both sides have developed a close interaction with experimental groups in their respective countries. This proposal raises the ongoing collaboration to a new level of ambition, by bringing the experimental groups into a jointly articulated initiative. Research activities will be both of a theoretical and experimental nature, and carried out symmetrically in Chile and France. There will be significant cross-talk among the various participants in the different labs and countries, reflecting the existing culture of collaboration. Extensive use will be made of current communications technology to link the various groups, and face-to-face meetings will be organized to enable the type of communication that can only be achieved through personal, collective contact. The propagation of waves in complex media is a vast subject. Particularly, lack of quantitative understanding, much less control, of the role of disorder, hampers progress in many fields, from the technology of amorphous semiconductors, to the control of turbulence in fluids, to the characterization of granular materials in the mining, food, and pharmaceutical industries. In this proposal, two specific topics have been chosen for research: 1) Wave propagation in slightly disordered periodic media, and 2) Effect of nonlinearities on wave propagation through disordered media. Available theory will be revisited and expanded as needed and suggested by currently available numerical capabilities and experimental hardware. Specific experiments will be performed with centimetric microwaves in a metallo-dielectric metamaterial; with acoustic waves in a wave guide endowed with a chain of resonators; with surface waves on a fluid, and with ultrasonic waves in solid materials. The criteria that have been used to arrive at these topics are: A) Familiarity of proposers with one or several recently developed, and available, technologies that enable unique data-gathering capabilities. B) Ease of control of disorder in the propagating medium. C) Close relation between theoretical and experimental capabilities of proposers. D) Track record of successful collaboration among participants.