Multiple scattering of waves leads to many peculiar phenomena such as complete band gaps in periodic structures and wave localization in disordered media. Within a band gap, excitations are evanescent; when localized, they remain confined in space until dissipated. Here, we report acoustic band gap and localization in a two-dimensional system of air cylinders in water. Exact numerical calculations reveal the unexpected result that localization is independent of the precise location or organization of the scatterers. Localization occurs within a finite region of frequencies, coincident with the complete band gap for a periodic lattice of scatterers. Inside the gap or localization regime, a previously uninvestigated collective behavior of the cylinders appears.
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Ye et al. (2000) studied this question.