Abstract

In the presence of an acoustic Rayleigh wave, the surface of an isotropic solid will exhibit a physical corrugation which moves with the wave. When an optical wave interacts with the surface acoustic wave, the light is simultaneously reflected and diffracted. Earlier diffraction integral work which specifically supports this area was performed by Mayer.¹ Additional development of phenomenological depolarization was later pursued by Stegeman² and considered the intrinsic stress polarization properties of transparent materials. Sarid³ also observed pronounced differences in the line shape of light scattered by partial acoustic waves. Following this, an experimental observation of light polarization and surface acoustic waves was made by Alippi et al.⁴ but lacked the development of a physical model of the interaction. Experimental data are compared to our model including scattering mechanisms associated with the surface corrugation and elastooptic effects, optical incident and azimuthal angles, and acoustic intensity and frequency for S- and P-polarized input light.

© 1986 Optical Society of America