Colloquium: Acoustical analogs of condensed-matter problems

As a result of advances in experimental and theoretical physics, many interesting problems have arisen in condensed-matter physics, typically as a result of the quantum-mechanical nature of a system. Areas of interest include Anderson localization, universal conductance fluctuations, normal electron persistent currents, and the properties of quasicrystals. Understanding such systems is challenging because of complications arising from the large number of particles involved, intractable symmetries, the presence of time-dependent or nonlinear terms in the Schroedinger equation, etc. Some progress has been made by studying large scale classical analog experiments which may accurately model the salient quantum-mechanical features of a condensed-matter system. This paper describes research with a number of acoustical systems which have addressed contemporary problems in condensed-matter physics