Light Diffraction on Ultrasound in a Spatially Periodic Acoustic Field

Characteristic features of anisotropic light diffraction in a spatially periodic acoustic field created by a sectioned piezoelectric transducer with antiphase excitation of adjacent sections are studied theoretically. The numerical calculation is carried out for a cell of a paratellurite crystal with a shear acoustic mode propagating at an angle of 3° to the (001) plane of the crystal. It is shown that this type of acoustooptic interaction has some interesting features that can be used when developing acoustooptic devices, in particular, modulators of nonpolarized light.