We investigate numerically and experimentally highly efficient acoustic lenses based on the principle of extraordinary acoustic transmission. We study circular, flat lenses composed of perforated air channels. The geometry is similar to binary Fresnel lenses, and the lenses exploit several resonance mechanisms to enhance the transmission, such as Fabry–Perot resonances in the channels and cavity resonances on the lens surface. The proposed lenses are able to transmit up to 83% of the incident energy and generate sharp focusing with very high amplification (up to 16 dB experimentally). Furthermore, the resulting lenses are thinner than other designs providing similar performance, making them ideal candidates for application in acoustic imaging and medical diagnostics.

We theoretically and experimentally investigate visco-thermal effects on the acoustic propagation through metamaterials consisting of rigid slabs with subwavelength slits embedded in air. We demonstrate that this unavoidable loss mechanism is not merely a refinement, but that it plays a dominant role in the actual acoustic response of the structure. Specifically, in the case of very narrow slits, the visco-thermal losses avoid completely the excitation of Fabry-Perot resonances, leading to 100% reflection. This is exactly opposite to the perfect transmission predicted in the idealised lossless case. Moreover, for a wide range of geometrical parameters, there exists an optimum slit width at which the energy dissipated in the structure can be as high as 50%. This work provides a clear evidence that visco-thermal effects are necessary to describe realistically the acoustic response of locally resonant metamaterials.

Metamaterials have demonstrated the possibility to produce super-resolved images by restoring propagative and evanescent waves. However, for efficient information transfer, for example, in compressed sensing, it is often desirable to visualize only the fast spatial variations of the wave field (carried by evanescent waves), as the one created by edges or small details. Image processing edge detection algorithms perform such operation, but they add time and complexity to the imaging process. Here we present an acoustic metamaterial that transmits only components of the acoustic field that are approximately equal to or smaller than the operating wavelength. The metamaterial converts evanescent waves into propagative waves exciting trapped resonances, and it uses periodicity to attenuate the propagative components. This approach achieves resolutions ∼5 times smaller than the operating wavelength and makes it possible to visualize independently edges aligned along different directions.