Characterization of temporal aiming for water waves with an anisotropic metabathymetry
Phys. Rev. B 112, 214301 – Published 1 December, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/1lc4-1gjw
Abstract
The deflection of waves by combining the effects of time modulation with anisotropy has been recently proposed in the context of electromagnetism. In this work, we characterize this phenomenon, called temporal aiming, for water waves using a time-varying metabathymetry. This metabathymetry is composed of thin vertical plates that are periodically arranged at the fluid bottom and which act as an effective anisotropic medium for the surface wave in the long-wavelength approximation. When this plate array is vertically lifted at the fluid bottom at a given time, the medium switches from isotropic to anisotropic, causing a wave packet to scatter in time and deflect from its initial trajectory. Following a simple modeling, we obtain the scattering coefficients of the two waves generated due to the sudden medium change as well as the angle of deviation with respect to the incident angle. We then numerically evaluate this scattering problem with simulations of the full two-dimensional effective anisotropic wave equation, with a time-dependent anisotropy tensor. Finally, we provide experimental evidence of the temporal aiming, using space-time resolved measurement techniques, demonstrating the trajectory shift of a wave packet and measuring its angle of deviation.
