ABSORPTION OF SOUND BY NOISE IN ONE-DIMENSION

Experimental results are presented for the excess attenuation of monof requency waves in the presence of high-intensity noise in one dimensio n. The theory by Rudenko and Chirkin predicts a Gaussian attenuation o f a weak signal in the presence of shockless noise, thus showing that in one dimension translational invariance has been broken. The theory is modified to incorporate wail losses providing, only then, excellent agreement with experiment. The agreement is shown as the frequency, n oise level, and distance from the source are varied. In addition, the spectral intensity of the high-frequency tail of fully developed shock less noise is observed to be an f(-3) power law in the frequency f, in accord with theory. This power law is a consequence of the far off eq uilibrium nature of the system. (C) 1996 Acoustical Society of America .