Acoustic circular dichroism in a three-dimensional chiral metamaterial

Circular dichroism (CD) is an intriguing chiroptical phenomenon associated with the interaction of chiral structures with circularly polarized lights. Although the CD effect has been extensively studied in optics, it has not yet been demonstrated in acoustic systems. Here, we demonstrate the acoustic CD effect in a three-dimensional chiral metamaterial supporting circularly polarized transverse sound. We find that the effect is negligible in the lossy metamaterial possessing C₄ rotational symmetry but can be strongly enhanced in the C₂-symmetric system with inhomogeneous loss. The phenomena can be understood based on the properties of the metamaterial's complex band structure and the quality factors of its eigenmodes. We show that the enhanced CD in the C₂-symmetric system is attributed to the polarization band gaps and the non-Hermitian exceptional points appearing near the Brillouin-zone center and boundaries. The results contribute to the understanding of chiral sound-matter interactions and can find applications in acoustic sensing of chiral structures and sound manipulations based on vector properties. © 2023 American Physical Society.