Birefringent phononic structures.

Within the framework of elastic anisotropy, caused in a phononic crystal due to low crystallographic symmetry, we adopt a model structure, already introduced in the case of photonic metamaterials, and by analogy, we study the effect of birefringence and acoustical activity in a phononic crystal. In particular, we investigate its low-frequency behavior and comment on the factors which determine chirality by reference to this model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]