Acousto-optics

Acousto-optics is a branch of physics that studies the interactions between sound waves and light waves, especially the diffraction of laser light by ultrasound (or sound in general) through an ultrasonic grating.

Optics has had a very long and full history, from ancient Greece, through the renaissance and modern times. As with optics, acoustics has a history of similar duration, again starting with the ancient Greeks. In contrast, the acousto-optic effect has had a relatively short history, beginning with Brillouin predicting the diffraction of light by an acoustic wave, being propagated in a medium of interaction, in 1922. This was then confirmed with experimentation in 1932 by Debye and Sears, and also by Lucas and Biquard.

The particular case of diffraction on the first order, under a certain angle of incidence, (also predicted by Brillouin), has been observed by Rytow in 1935. Raman and Nath (1937) have designed a general ideal model of interaction taking into account several orders. This model was developed by Phariseau (1956) for diffraction including only one diffraction order.

In general, acousto-optic effects are based on the change of the refractive index of a medium due to the presence of sound waves in that medium. Sound waves produce a refractive index grating in the material, and it is this grating that is "seen" by the light wave. These variations in the refractive index, due to the pressure fluctuations, may be detected optically by refraction, diffraction, and interference effects, reflection may also be used.

The acousto-optic effect is extensively used in the measurement and study of ultrasonic waves. However, the growing principal area of interest is in acousto-optical devices for the deflection, modulation, signal processing and frequency shifting of light beams. This is due to the increasing availability and performance of lasers, which have made the acousto-optic effect easier to observe and measure. Technical progress in both crystal growth and high frequency piezoelectric transducers has brought valuable benefits to acousto-optic components' improvements.

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