Number of Wavevectors for Each Frequency in a Periodic Structure

Abstract

Periodic structures have interesting acoustic and vibration properties making them suitable for a wide variety of applications. In a periodic structure, the number of frequencies for each wavevector depends on the degrees-of-freedom of the unit cell. In this paper, we study the number of wavevectors available at each frequency in a band diagram. This analysis defines the upper bound for the maximum number of wavevectors for each frequency in a general periodic structure which might include damping. Investigation presented in this paper can also provide an insight for designing materials in which the interaction between unit cells is not limited to the closest neighbor. As an example application of this work, we investigate phonon dispersion curves in hexagonal form of boron nitride to show that first neighbor interaction is not sufficient to model dispersion curves with force-constant model.