Building and Destroying Symmetry in 1-D Elastic Systems
arXiv:1011.2193 · doi:10.1063/1.3537866
Abstract
Locally periodic rods, which show approximate invariance with respect to translations, are constructed by joining unit cells. The spectrum then shows a band spectrum. We then break the local periodicity by including one or more defects in the system. When the defects follow a certain definite prescription, an analog of the Wannier-Stark ladders is gotten; when the defects are random, an elastic rod showing Anderson localization is obtained. In all cases experimental values match the theoretical predictions.
12 pages, 16 figures, Accepted in Proceedings of "Symmetries in Nature", Symposium in Memoriam Marcos Moshinsky