Transformation Acoustics in Generic Elastic Media

Abstract: In this work a transformation acoustics scheme for generic elastic media is developed. Our approach starts form the decomposition of the elasticity tensor in terms of its eigentensors, an idea previously used by Norris. While Norris' transformation acoustics is restricted to the special class of so-called pentamode materials, we show that a similar scheme can be defined for the most general elasticity tensor. As in case of Norris' model (and in sharp contrast to transformation optics), the compatibility equations of the transformation medium are not purely algebraic and it is not guaranteed that solutions to these equations exist for any choice of material parameters and coordinate transformation. Nonetheless, it is shown that our scheme yields new cloaking solutions for certain classes of materials. In particular, we present the first application of a transformation based device for a non-scalar wave equation outside of the field of electromagnetics.