Space and Time Control of Surface Waves – SurfWaves

Wave control has undergone remarkable developments during the last decades as it has applications in many fields from medical imaging to telecommunications or seismology. Controlling wave propagation in complex media faces major challenges: their design and fabrication is out of range due to the spatial and temporal scales involved, the complete knowledge of their properties is extremely difficult to obtain and direct observations of wave propagation inside the media is almost impossible to achieve in optics or acoustics.

The SurfWaves project will overcome these limitations using surface waves combined with a novel methodology which offer unique assets: a previously unmatched ease of non-invasive real-time observation with extreme precision on the wave amplitude, a diversity of real-time controls using ferrofluids, activable elasticity or effective gravity modifications and an ability to design dynamical, resonant, active, periodic or random media with a sub-wavelength resolution.

SurfWaves aims at deepening the fundamental understanding of space time control of wave propagation by addressing three major issues in current most active research fields: 1) Wave crystals and metamaterials, 2) Waves and time boundaries, 3) Waves in random media. This project will provide new insights and lead to a comprehensive understanding of spatial and temporal wave control based on experiments and careful modelling of the results combined with theoretical analysis. Furthermore, innovative approaches and original concepts will be developed in cloaking, time mirrors, spatio-temporal lenses, phase conjugation, Anderson localization, cartography of random media or sub-wavelength focalization.

SurfWaves is not only meant to develop a toolbox that will be used to shed a new light on fundamental issues for the whole wave community but also to trigger new research directions in fields such as acoustics, optics or seismology thanks to its novel approaches.