Nonlinear phasing and dephasing of three-wave mixing of acoustic guided waves.

We measure the propagation of guided acoustic waves in a nonlinear three-wave mixing experiment in a water-filled steel pipe. These waves exhibit a predicted phasing-dephasing behavior as a function of propagation distance due to the underlying velocity dispersion between the fundamentals and the nonlinearly generated waves. We extract the dimensionless nonlinear parameter, β, which is weakly frequency dependent.