Demonstration of negative refraction induced by synthetic gauge fields

Abstract: The phenomenon of negative refraction generally requires negative refractive indices or phase discontinuities, which can be realized using metamaterials or metasurfaces. Recent theories have proposed a novel mechanism for negative refraction based on synthetic gauge fields, which affect classical waves as if they were charged particles in electromagnetic fields, but this has not hitherto been demonstrated in experiment. Here, we report on the experimental demonstration of gauge-field-induced negative refraction in a twisted bilayer acoustic metamaterial. The bilayer twisting produces a synthetic gauge field for sound waves propagating within a projected two-dimensional geometry, with the magnitude of the gauge field parameterized by the choice of wavenumber along the third dimension. Waveguiding with backward propagating modes is also demonstrated in a trilayer configuration that implements strong gauge fields. These results provide an alternative route to achieving negative refraction in synthetic materials.