Spectral gaps for periodic piezoelectric waveguides (Q903221)

The continuous spectrum of a cylindrical waveguide of any physical nature is always the entire ray \([\lambda_{\dag}, +\infty)\), included in the positive closed real axis \(\overline{\mathbb{R}^+}\) of the complex plane \(\mathbb{C}\). This means that for the spectral parameter \(\lambda\) above the cutoff value \(\lambda_{\dag}\), wave processes occur and propagating waves may drive energy from the central part of the waveguide to the infinity and vice versa. However, the structure of the spectrum may be much more complicated in a periodic waveguide. In this context, a most challenging question is to find waveguides of simplest shape having a spectral gap with a prescribed position and width. The authors give in some sense a positive answer to this question in the case of piezoelectric waveguides, which are examples of ``smart'' materials and devices. It is considered quite exotic geometric shapes, a shape optimization analysis is omitted here. A special variant of asymptotic analysis is used for the considered piezoelectric periodic waveguide \(\Pi_{\varepsilon}\), which consists of ``beads'' \(\varpi(j), j \in \mathbb{Z} = \{0, \pm1, \pm2,\dots\}\) connected by a thin ``needle'' \(\Omega^{\varepsilon}\). With the help of the max-min-principle and elaborate estimates, it is proved that for any \(J \in \mathbb{N} = \{1, 2, 3,\dots\}\) there exists \( \varepsilon_j > 0\) such that the essential spectrum of the waveguide \(\Pi_{\varepsilon}\) with \(\varepsilon \in (0,\varepsilon_j)\) contains at least \(J\) gaps.