Optical polarimetric imaging of surface acoustic waves.

Surface acoustic wave (SAW) is utilized in diverse fields ranging from physics, engineering, to biology, for transducing, sensing and processing various signals. Optical imaging of SAW provides valuable information since the amplitude and the phase of the displacement field can be measured locally with the resolution limited by the spot size of the optical beam. So far, optical imaging techniques rely on modulation of optical path, phase, or diffraction associated with SAW. Here, we report experiments showing that SAW can be imaged with an optical polarimetry. Since the amount of polarization rotation can be straightforwardly calibrated when polarimeters work in the shot-noise-limited regime, the polarimetric imaging of SAW is beneficial for quantitative studies of SAW-based technologies.