Bloch spectra for high contrast elastic media (Q2148937)

Materials with periodic inclusions of high contrast lead to creation of band gaps in the spectrum of the associated operator. This has important technological consequences in photonics (for Maxwell equation) and phononics (for Elasticity equation). Such an observation was made by \textit{R. Hempel} and \textit{K. Lienau} [Commun. Partial Differ. Equations 25, No. 7--8, 1445--1470 (2000, Zbl 0958.35089)]. In particular, the relation between the Bloch spectrum as the contrast \(k\in\mathbb{R}\) goes to infinity and the Dirichlet eigenvalue problem for the inclusion \(D\subset \mathbb{R}^d\) was established. In the paper of \textit{R. Lipton} and \textit{R. Viator jun.} [ESAIM, Math. Model. Numer. Anal. 51, No. 3, 889--918 (2017, Zbl 1375.35109).], this relationship was quantified, in the context of photonics, by proving a decomposition of the operator \(-\nabla\cdot(\chi_D\,+\,k\,\chi_{D^c})\nabla)\) with \(\alpha\)-quasiperiodic boundary conditions via the spectrum of Neumann-Poincaré operator associated to the \(\alpha\)-quasiperiodic double layer potential restricted to \(\partial D\). This allows for a power series expansion for the Bloch eigenvalues in a neighbourhood of (now) complexified \(1/k=0\). These elements allow for a quantification of the conditions required for separation of energy bands. In the present paper, a similar study is conducted for the periodic elasticity operator with high contrast. The model is that of the Lamé system (with constant coefficients) in each phase of the material. The Lamé constants in each phase differ multiplicatively by the contrast \(k\in\mathbb{R}\). A difficulty in carrying out this program is that the Neumann-Poincaré operator associated to the \(\alpha\)-quasiperiodic double layer potential restricted to \(\partial D\) is not compact for systems (as against scalar problems), however, it is polynomially compact. Inclusions arranged in various geometries have been considered.