Analytical model of an acoustic diode comprising a superlattice and a nonlinear medium

We give an analytical analysis to the acoustic propagation in an acoustic diode (AD) model formed by coupling a superlattice (SL) with a nonlinear medium. Analytical solutions of the acoustic transmission are obtained by studying the propagations in the SL and the nonlinear medium separately with the conventional transfer-matrix method and a perturbation technique. Compared with the previous numerical method, the proposed approach contributes a better physical insight into the intrinsic mechanism of acoustic rectification and helps us to predict the performance of an AD within the effective rectifying bands in a simple way. This is potentially significant for the practical design and fabrication of AD devices.