Steering Flexural Waves by Amplitude-Shift Elastic Metasurfaces

Abstract: As 2D materials with subwavelength structures, elastic metasurfaces show remarkable abilities to manipulate elastic waves at will through artificial boundary conditions. However, the application prospects of current metasurfaces may be restricted by their phase-only modulating boundaries. Herein, we present the next generation of elastic metasurfaces by additionally incorporating amplitude-shift modulation. A general theory for target wave fields steered by metasurfaces is proposed by modifying the Huygens-Fresnel principle. As examples, two amplitude-shift metasurfaces concerning flexural waves in thin plates are carried out: one is to transform a cylindrical wave into a Gaussian beam by elaborating both amplitude and phase shifts, and the other one is to focus the incidence by amplitude modulations only. These examples coincide well over theoretical calculations, numerical simulations and experimental tests. This work may underlie the design of metasurfaces with complete control over guided elastic waves, and may extend to more sophisticated applications, such as analog signal processing and holographic imaging.