2025/09/30 by Ugo Boscain, Xiangyu Ma, Boscain, Ugo +5
Engineering · Health Professions · Neuroscience · #Acoustic Wave Phenomena Research #Analysis of PDEs (math.AP) #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #Classical Physics (physics.class-ph) #FOS: Electrical engineering #FOS: Mathematics #FOS: Physical sciences #Hearing Loss and Rehabilitation #Medical Physics (physics.med-ph) #Noise Effects and Management #Signal Processing (eess.SP) #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.26395
openalex publication_date 2025/09/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In this paper, we study a simple linear model of the cochlea as a set of vibrating strings. We make hypothesis that the information sent to the auditory cortex is the energy stored in the strings and consider all oscillation modes of the strings. We show the emergence of the sub-harmonic series whose existence was hypothesized in the XVI century to explain the consonance of the minor chord. We additionally show how the nonlinearity of the energy can be used to study the emergence of the combination tone (Tartini's third sound) shedding new light on this long debated subject.