Local time reversal symmetry breaking induced attenuation and localization of phonon transmission

Time-reversal symmetry (TRS) breaking induced dissipationless topological phonon edge modes provide an unprecedented way to manipulate phonon transport. However, the effect of TRS breaking on the transport properties of bulk phonon modes is still unclear. In this work, we assess the effect of local TRS-breaking domains on the transport properties of bulk phonon modes in a two-dimensional (2D) hexagonal phononic lattice model. The results show that bulk phonon modes can be strongly scattered by local TRS breaking owing to the shift of the local phonon band gap, which results in significant suppression of phonon transmission. Moreover, we show that the aperiodic distribution of local TRS-breaking domains can induce phonon Anderson localization, and the localization length can be effectively tuned by the strength of TRS breaking. Our study suggests that TRS breaking can not only be used to construct dissipationless topological phonon edge states, but also be used to block the transmission of bulk phonon modes by carefully controlling the size and distribution of TRS-breaking domains. Such results provide a highly alternative way for manipulating energy flux at the nanoscale.