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    Acousto Optic Effect

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    Ann
    The acousto-optic effect refers to changes in the refractive index of a medium caused by acoustic waves passing through it. An RF oscillator connected to a piezoelectric crystal generates acoustic waves in the medium, forming a standing wave pattern that acts like a diffraction grating. Light incident on the medium gets diffracted into different orders depending on whether the acoustic grating is thin (Raman-Nath regime) or thick (Bragg regime). In the Bragg regime, diffraction only occurs at the Bragg angle defined by the wavelength of light and acoustic waves.

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    Acousto Optic Effect

    Uploaded by

    Ann
    23 views2 pages
    The acousto-optic effect refers to changes in the refractive index of a medium caused by acoustic waves passing through it. An RF oscillator connected to a piezoelectric crystal generates acoustic waves in the medium, forming a standing wave pattern that acts like a diffraction grating. Light incident on the medium gets diffracted into different orders depending on whether the acoustic grating is thin (Raman-Nath regime) or thick (Bragg regime). In the Bragg regime, diffraction only occurs at the Bragg angle defined by the wavelength of light and acoustic waves.

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    The acousto-optic effect refers to changes in the refractive index of a medium caused by acoustic waves passing through it. An RF oscillator connected to a piezoelectric crystal generates acoustic waves in the medium, forming a standing wave pattern that acts like a diffraction grating. Light incident on the medium gets diffracted into different orders depending on whether the acoustic grating is thin (Raman-Nath regime) or thick (Bragg regime). In the Bragg regime, diffraction only occurs at the Bragg angle defined by the wavelength of light and acoustic waves.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    23 views2 pages

    Acousto Optic Effect

    Uploaded by

    Ann
    The acousto-optic effect refers to changes in the refractive index of a medium caused by acoustic waves passing through it. An RF oscillator connected to a piezoelectric crystal generates acoustic waves in the medium, forming a standing wave pattern that acts like a diffraction grating. Light incident on the medium gets diffracted into different orders depending on whether the acoustic grating is thin (Raman-Nath regime) or thick (Bragg regime). In the Bragg regime, diffraction only occurs at the Bragg angle defined by the wavelength of light and acoustic waves.

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    ACOUSTO-OPTIC EFFECT

    Acousto-optic effect refers to the change in refractive index of a medium caused by mechanical
    strains accompanying the passage of an acoustic wave through the medium. The acoustic waves
    are sent by connecting an RF oscillator to a piezoelectric generator like a quartz crystal. The waves
    sent in the medium gets reflected at the boundary, which on interference with the incident waves,
    forms a standing wave pattern in the liquid. The standing wave pattern creates a periodic variation
    of pressure in the medium (along the direction of propagation of the wave) and hence the refractive
    index, which is equivalent to a grating that is referred as the acoustic grating. The experimental
    arrangement is shown in the following figure. Here the horizontal dashed lines represent the
    acoustic wavefronts. The wavelength of the acoustic grating is represented as u . The incident
    (wavength  ) and the modulated optical wavefronts are also shows.

    The wave incident on the medium gets diffracted into different orders as sown in the figure
    drawn. Two cases are of interest here, namely (i) the Raman-Nath regime and (ii) the Bragg
    regime.
    In the Raman-Nath regime, the acoustic grating is so thin that the diffracted light suffers no
    further redistribution before leaving the modulator. The light is diffracted as from a simple plane
    grating as per the relation
    m  no u sin  m (1)
    where, m  0,  1,  2, ... is the order,  m is the corresponding angle of diffraction as illustrated
    in the figure drawn and no stands for the refractive index of the medium in the absence of the
    acoustic wave.
    In the Bragg regime, the light diffracted from the incident beam is extensively re-diffracted
    before leaving the acoustic field. In this case, the acoustic field acts as a thick grating, i.e., grating
    made of planes rather than lines. The situation is similar to that of Bragg diffraction from atomic
    planes. Thus, when the light beam is incident an angle  , diffraction occurs for angle of incidence
       B , known as the Bragg angle, under the condition

    sin  B  (2)
    2no u

    The diffraction is similar to that obtained with a plane grating, but only for special angles of
    incidence; the angle of incidence must be equal to the angle of diffraction, which is the Bragg
    angle.

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