THE AHARONOV-BOHM EFFECT REVISITED BY AN ACOUSTIC TIME-REVERSAL MIRROR

We take advantage of the violation of time-reversal invariance for aco ustic waves to achieve a new way of characterizing a vorticity field w ith a double time-reversal minor (TRM). In particular, we show experim entally that the double TRM works as a vorticity amplifier. In the cas e of a vorticity filament, the sound-vorticity interaction is interpre ted as the acoustical analog of the Aharonov-Bohm effect. Numerical ex periments simulate the acoustical Aharonov-Bohm effect by propagating a plane wave which is scattered by a heterogeneous motionless medium. [S0031-9007(97)04366-4].