Imaging ripples on phononic crystals reveals acoustic band structure and Bloch harmonics.

Broadband surface phonon wave packets on a phononic crystal made up of a microstructured line pattern are tracked in two dimensions and in real time with an ultrafast optical technique. The eigenmode distribution and the 2D acoustic band structure are obtained from spatiotemporal Fourier transforms of the data up to 1 GHz. We find stop bands at the zone boundaries for both leaky-longitudinal and Rayleigh waves, and show how the structure of individual acoustic eigenmodes in k space depends on Bloch harmonics and on mode coupling.