On the Origin of Minnaert Resonances

Abstract: It is well known that the presence, in a homogeneous acoustic medium, of a small inhomogeneity (of size $\varepsilon$), enjoying a high contrast of both its mass density and bulk modulus, amplifies the generated total fields. This amplification is more pronounced when the incident frequency is close to the Minnaert frequency $\omega_{M}$. Here we explain the origin of such a phenomenon: at first we show that the scattering of an incident wave of frequency $\omega$ is described by a self-adjoint $\omega$-dependent Schr\"{o}dinger operator with a singular $\delta$-like potential supported at the inhomogeneity interface. Then we show that, in the low energy regime (corresponding in our setting to $\varepsilon\ll1$) such an operator has a non-trivial limit (i.e., it asymptotically differs from the Laplacian) if and only if $\omega=\omega_{M}$. The limit operator describing the non-trivial scattering process is explicitly determined and belongs to the class of point perturbations of the Laplacian. When the frequency of the incident wave approaches $\omega_{M}$, the scattering process undergoes a transition between an asymptotically trivial behaviour and a non-trivial one.