Directional Elastic Pseudospin and Nonseparability of Directional and Spatial Degrees of Freedom in Parallel Arrays of Coupled Waveguides

Abstract

We experimentally and numerically investigated elastic waves in parallel arrays of elastically coupled one-dimensional acoustic waveguides composed of aluminum rods coupled along their length with epoxy. The elastic waves in each waveguide take the form of superpositions of states in the space of direction of propagation. The direction of propagation degrees of freedom is analogous to the polarization of a quantum spin; hence, these elastic waves behave as pseudospins. The amplitude in the different rods of a coupled array of waveguides (i.e., the spatial mode of the waveguide array) refer to the spatial degrees of freedom. The elastic waves in a parallel array of coupled waveguides are subsequently represented as tensor products of the elastic pseudospin and spatial degrees of freedom. We demonstrate the existence of elastic waves that are nonseparable linear combinations of tensor products states of pseudospin/ spatial degrees of freedom. These elastic waves are analogous to the so-called Bell states of quantum mechanics. The amplitude coefficients of the nonseparable linear combination of states are complex due to the Lorentzian character of the elastic resonances associated with these waves. By tuning through the amplitudes, we are able to navigate both experimentally and numerically a portion of the Bell state Hilbert space.