Calculation of effective acoustooptic coefficient by abbreviated subscript formalism Jieping Xu and William T.

Rhodes Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Electrical Engineering, Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0250. Received 8 December 1987. 0003-6935/88/112101-03$02.00/0. 1988 Optical Society of America. In designing a new type of acoustooptic (AO) device, one must calculate the effective AO coefficient p many times for many different AO interaction configurations (different acoustic wave propagation directions, polarizations, whether longitudinal or shear wave, and different polarization directions of the incident and diffracted light waves). The standard expression for p is in tensor form and is inconvenient for practical calculations. It is well extablished that, for quantities containing a pair of symmetrical tensor subscripts, practical calculations are simplified and can be carried out by matrix-vector (M-V) multiplications if quantities with abbreviated subscripts are used. In this paper a new abbreviated-subscript expression for p is obtained. With this expression, p can be calculated for any AO interaction configuration by two M-V multiplications and one vectorvector multiplication. In our experience, the compact notation greatly facilitates practical calculations. The standard expression for the effective AO coefficient is given by1 where (d) and (i) are unit vectors along the polarization directions of the diffracted and incident light waves, respectively, and kl is the unit tensor of the strain Skl, i-e., Skl = Skl. (The usual summation convention over repeated subscripts is assumed in this and the following expressions.) The calculation of p ijkl kl (and hence of p) is in practice cumbersome because (1) for any specific crystal class p i j k l is generally given not in tensor form but in the abbreviated form pIJ and (2) there are two contraction operations with respect to two tensor subscripts that cannot be carried out by simple M-V multiplication. However, it is easily verified that Eq. (1) is equivalent to the following two equations:

The second equation, Eq. (3), can be reduced further to the M-V product
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where the 3 X 6 matrix il(i) is constructed from i(i) by the following equation:

Using the values p12 = 0.090,p31 = 0.179,and p41 = -0.l51 for lithium niobate, the value of that maximizes p is easily found to equal 36.8. Substituting this value of into Eq. (8), we get P max = 0.29. [It should be noted that lithium niobate is also a good piezoelectric and electrooptic medium, and generally there is an indirect AO effect through both piezoelectric and electrooptic effects. The total acoustooptic coefficient pIJ is given by

It should be noted thatil(i)is constructed fromi(i)in the same way as liK is constructed from li in crystal acoustics.2 Equation (4) can also be written as whereil(d)is constructed from i(d) in the same way as given by Eq. (5) for il(i) This means that as soon as the types of the acoustic wave (i.e., J) and optical waves [i.e.,i(d)andj(i)]are given, I [through Eq. (4)] and pIJJ can both be obtained by a M-V multiplication. Since I is a row vector and pIJJ is a column vector, the effective AO coefficient p is obtained through Eq. (2) by taking the inner product of these two vectors. We illustrate the calculational procedure by two examples. Consider first a lithium niobate AO device with a longitudinal acoustic wave propagating along the x axis. The propagation direction and polarization direction of the light beam are as shown in Fig. 1. We would like to determine the value of the angle that makes p maximum and find the maximum value of p. Since the acoustic wave is a longitudinal wave along the x axis, we have [J] = [ 1 0 0 0 0 0 ] T (T denoting transpose) and

where l is the unit vector along the propagation direction of the acoustic wave and p'IJ is the indirect AO coefficient. However, for our case, we have l= (1,0,0). By calculating the matrix (r,Iklk),(lieiJ,), it is easy to prove that all elements of p'IJ except P55, P56, P5, and p'66 equal zero. Since only the first column of the matrix p I J , as indicated by Eq. (6), is of concern in this case, the indirect AO effect has no influence.] The second example is a TeO2 AO device with the slow shear wave propagating along [110]. Using the coordinate transformation rule for [SJ], it is easy to obtain2

and thus

From Fig. 1 it follows that i(i) =i(d)= [0,-sin,cos]. Equation (4) then yields By taking the inner product of I and [pIJJ], one obtains The condition dp/d = 0 yields the following equation in volving :

The propagation direction of the light beam is along [001]. The polarization directions of the incident and diffracted light beams should be e light (i.e., along [110]) and 0 light (i.e., along [110]), respectively. Thus one has Equations (4) and (2) thus give

If the propagation direction of the light beam is also along [110] (corresponding to a collinear AO interaction), one has and Eqs. (4) and (2) yield

The result p = 0 indicates that the slow shear wave in a TeO2 crystal cannot be used for a collinear AO interaction.

Fig. 1. Working mode of a lithium niobate AO device with a longi tudinal acoustic wave propagating along the x axis.
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This work was partially supported by the Joint Services Electronics Program under contract DAAL03-87-K-0059. Jieping Xu is on leave from the Department of Applied Physics of Beijing Polytechnic University.

References 1. I. C. Chang, "Acoustooptic Devices and Applications," IEEE Trans. Sonics Ultrason. SU-23, No. 1, 2 (1976). 2. B. A. Auld, Acoustic Fields and Waves in Solids,Vol. 1 (Wiley, New York, 1973).

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