Robust temporal adiabatic passage with perfect frequency conversion between detuned acoustic cavities

For classical waves, phase matching is vital for enabling efficient energy transfer in many scenarios, such as waveguide coupling and nonlinear optical frequency conversion. Here, we propose a temporal quasi-phase matching method and realize robust and complete acoustical energy transfer between arbitrarily detuned cavities. In a set of three cavities, A, B, and C, the time-varying coupling is established between adjacent elements. Analogy to the concept of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage, amplitudes of the two couplings are modulated as time-delayed Gaussian functions, and the couplings’ signs are periodically flipped to eliminate temporal phase mismatching. As a result, robust and complete acoustic energy transfer from A to C is achieved. The non-reciprocal frequency conversion properties of our design are demonstrated. Our research takes a pivotal step towards expanding wave steering through time-dependent modulations and is promising to extend the frequency conversion based on state evolution in various linear Hermitian systems to nonlinear and non-Hermitian regimes.