Chapter 3 Magneto-, acousto-, and electro-optical eect

References * Eugene Hecht, "Optics", Addison-Wesley, Reading 1987 * NewFocus Application Note 02: Practical Uses and Applications of ElectroOptic Modulators http://www.newfocus.com/ * AAoptoelectronic: Application notes http://www.aaoptoelectronic.com/

Optical Activity A rotation in the plane of oscillation of a linearly polarized beam upon passage through a medium. It occurs in asymmetrical molecules where the electrons are more easily accelerated in one orientation than another. The random orientation of molecules in the medium does not cancel the eect, since ipped molecules retain the same handedness (just as a right-handed helix remains right-handed upon turning it upside down). Optical activity is much more prominent in nature than would be normally expected due to the fact that almost all amino acids (the building blocks of life) are left-handed. The angle of rotation is dened as positive when the electric eld is rotated clockwise, (3.1) = d (nl nr ) 0

where d is the thickness of the medium, 0 is the vacuum wavelength,nl is the index of refraction for parallel polarization and nr is the index of refraction for perpendicular polarization. A medium in which nl > nr is called d-rotary, and a medium in which nl < nr is called l-rotary. 51

52CHAPTER 3. MAGNETO-, ACOUSTO-, AND ELECTRO-OPTICAL EFFECT A quantity called specic rotary power is dened as (3.2) [specicrotarypower] = d

3.1

Magneto-optic eect

A magneto-optic eect is any one of a number of phenomena in which an electromagnetic wave propagates through a medium that has been altered by the presence of a quasistatic magnetic eld. In such a material, which is also called gyrotropic or gyromagnetic, left- and right-rotating elliptical polarizations can propagate at dierent speeds, leading to a number of important phenomena. When light is transmitted through a layer of magneto-optic material, the result is called the Faraday eect: the plane of polarization can be rotated, forming a Faraday rotator. The results of reection from a magneto-optic material are known as the magneto-optic Kerr eect (not to be confused with the nonlinear Kerr eect). In general, magneto-optic eects break time reversal symmetry locally (i.e. when only the propagation of light, and not the source of the magnetic eld, is considered), which is a necessary condition to construct devices such as optical isolators (through which light passes in one direction but not the other). (The other, less useful, way to break time reversal symmetry is to rely upon absorption loss.)

3.1.1

Faraday eect

The Faraday eect or Faraday rotation is a magneto-optical phenomenon, or an interaction between light and a magnetic eld. The rotation of the plane of polarization is proportional to the intensity of the component of the magnetic eld in the direction of the beam of light. The Faraday eect, a type of magneto-optic eect, discovered by Michael Faraday in 1845, was the rst experimental evidence that light and magnetism are related. The theoretical basis for that relation, now called electromagnetic radiation, was developed by James Clerk Maxwell in the 1860s and 1870s. This eect occurs in most optically transparent dielectric materials (including liquids) when they are subject to strong magnetic elds. In the quantum mechanical description, it occurs because imposition of a magnetic eld alters the energy levels (cf. Zeeman eect). The Faraday eect is a result of ferromagnetic resonance when the permeability of a material is represented by a tensor. This resonance causes waves to be

3.1. MAGNETO-OPTIC EFFECT

53

decomposed into two circularly polarized rays which propagate at dierent speeds, a property known as circular birefringence. The rays can be considered to re-combine upon emergence from the medium, however owing to the dierence in propagation speed they do so with a net phase oset, resulting in a rotation of the angle of linear polarization. There are a few applications of Faraday rotation in measuring instruments. For instance, the Faraday eect has been used to measure optical rotatory power, for amplitude modulation of light, and for remote sensing of magnetic elds. The relation between the angle of rotation of the polarization and the magnetic eld in a diamagnetic material is: Polarization rotation due to the Faraday eect (3.3) = V Bd

where is the angle of rotation (in radians), B is the magnetic ux density in the direction of propagation (in teslas), d is the length of the path (in meters) where the light and magnetic eld interact, V is the Verdet constant for the material. This empirical proportionality constant (in units of radians per tesla per metre) varies with wavelength and temperature and is tabulated for various materials. A positive Verdet constant corresponds to L-rotation (anticlockwise) when the direction of propagation is parallel to the magnetic eld and to R-rotation (clockwise) when the direction of propagation is anti-parallel. Thus, if a ray of light is passed through a material and reected back through it, the rotation doubles. Some materials, such as terbium gallium garnet (TGG) have extremely high Verdet constants ( 40radT 1 m1). By placing a rod of this material in a strong magnetic eld, Faraday rotation angles of over 0.78 rad (45 ) can be achieved. This allows the construction of Faraday rotators, which are the principal component of Faraday isolators, devices which transmit light in only one direction. Similar isolators are constructed for microwave systems by using ferrite rods in a waveguide with a surrounding magnetic eld.

Faraday rotation in the interstellar medium The Faraday eect is imposed on light over the course of its propagation from its origin to the Earth, through the interstellar medium. Here, the eect is caused by free electrons and can be characterized as a dierence in the refractive index seen by the two circularly polarized propagation modes. Hence, in contrast to the Faraday eect in solids or liquids, interstellar Faraday rotation has a simple dependence on the wavelength of light (), namely: = RM2 , where the overall strength of the eect is characterized by RM, the rotation measure.

54CHAPTER 3. MAGNETO-, ACOUSTO-, AND ELECTRO-OPTICAL EFFECT Faraday rotation is an important tool in astronomy for the measurement of magnetic elds, which can be estimated from rotation measures given a knowledge of the electron number density. Two gyrotropic materials with reversed rotation directions of the two principal polarizations, corresponding to complex-conjugate tensors for lossless media, are called optical isomers.

3.1.2

Gyrotropic permittivity

In particular, in a magneto-optic material the presence of a magnetic eld (either externally applied or because the material itself is ferromagnetic) can cause a change in the permittivity tensor of the material. The becomes anisotropic, a 3 3 matrix, with complex o-diagonal components, depending of course on the frequency of incident light. If the absorption losses can be neglected, is a Hermitian matrix. The resulting principal axes become complex as well, corresponding to ellipticallypolarized light where left- and right-rotating polarizations can travel at dierent speeds (analogous to birefringence). More specically, for the case where absorption losses can be neglected, the most general form of Hermitian is: xx xy + igz xz igy yy yz + igx (3.4) = xy igz xz + igy yz igx zz

or equivalently the relationship between the displacement eld D and the electric eld E is: (3.5) D = E = E + i E g

where is a real symmetric matrix and g = (gx , gy , gz ) is a real pseudovector called the gyration vector, whose magnitude is generally small compared to the eigenvalues of . The direction of g is called the axis of gyration of the material. To rst order, g is proportional to the applied magnetic eld: (3.6) g = 0 ( m) H

where (m) is the magneto-optical susceptibility (a scalar in isotropic media, but more generally a tensor). If this susceptibility itself depends upon the electric eld, one can obtain a nonlinear optical eect of magneto-optical parametric generation

3.1. MAGNETO-OPTIC EFFECT

55

(somewhat analogous to a Pockels eect whose strength is controlled by the applied magnetic eld). The simplest case to analyze is the one in which g is a principal axis (eigenvector) of , and the other two eigenvalues of are identical. Then, if we let g lie in the z direction for simplicity, the tensor simplies to the form: 1 +igz 0 0 (3.7) = igz 1 0 0 2

Most commonly, one considers light propagating in the z direction (parallel to g ). In this case the solutions are elliptically polarized electromagnetic waves with phase velocities 1/ (1 gz )(where is the magnetic permeability). This dierence in phase velocities leads to the Faraday eect. For light propagating purely perpendicular to the axis of gyration, the properties are known as the Cotton-Mouton eect and used for a Circulator. Cotton-Mouton eect The production of birefringence when a constant magnetic eld is applied to a transparent medium perpendicular to the direction of propagation. It occurs in liquids, and is much stronger than the Voigt eect. It is the magnetic analog of the Kerr eect. n B 2

(3.8)

3.1.3

Magneto-optic Kerr eect

Magneto-optic Kerr eect (MOKE) is one of the magneto-optic eects. It describes changes of the reections from the magnetized media. It is similar to the Faraday eect that describes the light passing through the media. The light that is reected from a magnetized surface, changes in polarization. MOKE can be further categorized by the direction of the magnetization vector with respect to the reection surface and the plane of incidence. When the magnetization vector is perpendicular to the reection surface and parallel to the plane of incidence, the eect is called the polar Kerr eect. To simplify the analysis, near normal incidence is usually employed when doing experiments in the polar geometry. In the longitudinal eect the magnetization vector is parallel to both the reection surface and the plane of incidence. When the magnetization is perpendicular to the plane of incidence and parallel to the surface it is said to be in the transverse conguration.

56CHAPTER 3. MAGNETO-, ACOUSTO-, AND ELECTRO-OPTICAL EFFECT Reection of a beam of linearly polarised light from a magnetised surface causes the polarisation to become elliptical, with the principal axis rotated with respect to the incoming light. Usually the amount of rotation (in radians) and of ellipticity (ratio between the minor and major axis of the ellipse) induced in the reected beam is of the order of 1/1000, i.e. relatively small. This phenomenon is known as the magneto-optic Kerr eect (MOKE). In the case of ultrathin lms with total thickness below about 10 nm, the eect is proportional to the lm thickness and the technique assumes the name Surface-MOKE (SMOKE). SMOKE is mainly used to measure the hysteresis loops of thin magnetic lms, by plotting the signal (rotation or ellipticity) as a function of the applied magnetic eld. Unfortunately, such a signal is proportional to the magnetisation, but an absolute quantitative estimation of it requires the use of other magnetometry techniques, such as vibrating sample magnetometry. MOKE can also be used as a scanning microscopy technique, so that magnetic domain imaging with micrometric resolution becomes possible. Even submicrometric resolution can be achieved combining magnetooptic measurements with a scanning near-eld optical microscopy (SNOM) apparatus. Although a microscopic explanation of magneto-optic eects would have to consider the coupling between the electrical eld of the polarized light and the electron spin within the magnetic medium which occurs through the spin-orbit interaction, a simple interpretation is usually achieved using a macroscopic point of view, where magneto-optic eects arise from the antisymmetric, o-diagonal elements in the dielectric tensor. In particular, the magneto-optical eect can be understood on the basis of dierent response of the electrons to left and right polarized electromagnetic waves. In fact, a linearly polarised beam of light can be thought as a superposition of such two kinds of waves. Electrons will be driven into left circular motion by the left-polarized wave while the right-polarized wave will drive them into right circular motion, with equal radii of the orbits. Now, since the dipole moment is proportional to this radius, an external magnetic eld applied to in the propagation direction will cause an additional Lorentz force to act on each electron. As a consequence, the radius for the left-circular motion will be reduced and the radius for the right circular motion will be increased, so that the emerging light is elliptically (instead of linearly) polarized.

3.2

Electro-optical eect

The electro-optical eect causes a change in the refractive index as a function of an electric eld * Pockels eect (or linear electro-optic eect): change in the refractive index linearly proportional to the electric eld. Only certain crystalline solids show the

3.2. ELECTRO-OPTICAL EFFECT Pockels eect, as it requires inversion asymmetry

57

* non-linear Kerr eect (or quadratic electro-optic eect, QEO eect): change in the refractive index proportional to the square of the electric eld. All materials display the Kerr eect, with varying magnitudes, but it is generally much weaker than the Pockels eect * electro-gyration: change in the optical activity.

3.2.1

Pockels eect

The Pockels eect, or Pockels electro-optic eect, produces birefringence in an optical medium induced by a constant or varying electric eld. It is distinguished from the Kerr eect by the fact that the birefringence is proportional to the electric eld, whereas in the Kerr eect it is quadratic in the eld. The Pockels eect occurs only in crystals that lack inversion symmetry, such as lithium niobate or gallium arsenide. Friedrich Carl Alwin Pockels studied the eect which bears his name in 1893. Pockels cells The Pockels eect is used to make Pockels cells, which are voltagecontrolled wave plates. The electric eld can be applied to the crystal medium either longitudinally or transversely to the light beam. The electric eld can be longitudinal or transverse to the light ray. Longitudinal Pockels cells need transparent or ring electrodes. Transverse voltage requirements can be reduced by lengthening the crystal. The crystal axis can be longitudinal or transverse. A longitudinal cell has to be quite big, as the crystals are somehow inecient in this mode. Alignment of the crystal axis with the ray axis is critical as misalignment leads to birefringence and to a large phase shift across the long crystal. This leads to polarization rotation if the alignment is not exactly parallel or perpendicular to the polarization. A transverse cell consists of two crystals in opposite orientation, which give a zero order wave plate when voltage is turned o. This is often not perfect and drifts with temperature. But the mechanical alignment of the crystal axis is not so critical and is often done by hand without screws; while misalignment leads to some energy in the wrong ray (either e or o), in contrast to the longitudinal case, this is not amplied through the length of the crystal. Pockels cells may be used to rotate the polarization of a passing beam. Because of the high dielectric constant of the crystal, Pockels cells behave like a capacitor. When switching these to high voltage a high charge is needed;

58CHAPTER 3. MAGNETO-, ACOUSTO-, AND ELECTRO-OPTICAL EFFECT consequently, fast switching requires large currents. Pockels cells for bre optics may employ a travelling wave design to reduce current requirements. Applications of Pockels cells Pockels cells are used in a variety of scientic and technical applications: A Pockels cell, combined with a polarizer, can be used for a variety of applications. Switching between no optical rotation and 90 rotation creates a fast shutter capable of "opening" and "closing" in nanoseconds. The same technique can be used to impress information on the beam by modulating the rotation between 0 and 90 ; the exiting beams intensity, when viewed through the polarizer, contains an amplitude-modulated signal. Preventing the feedback of a laser cavity by using a polarizing prism. This prevents optical amplication by directing light of a certain polarization out of the cavity. Because of this, the gain medium is pumped to a highly excited state. When the medium has become saturated by energy, the Pockels cell is switched, and the intracavity light is allowed to exit. This creates a very fast, high intensity pulse. Q-switching, chirped pulse amplication, and cavity dumping use this technique. Pockels cells can be used for quantum key distribution by polarizing photons.

3.2.2

Kerr eect

The Kerr eect or the quadratic electro-optic eect (QEO eect) is a change in the refractive index of a material in response to an electric eld. It is distinct from the Pockels eect in that the induced index change is directly proportional to the square of the electric eld instead of to the magnitude of the eld. All materials show a Kerr eect, but certain liquids display the eect more strongly than other materials do. The Kerr eect was discovered in 1875 by John Kerr, a Scottish physicist. Two special cases of the Kerr eect are normally considered: the Kerr electrooptic eect, or DC Kerr eect, and the optical Kerr eect, or AC Kerr eect. Kerr electro-optic eect (DC Kerr) The Kerr electro-optic eect, or DC Kerr eect, is the special case in which the electric eld is a slowly varying external eld applied by, for instance, a voltage on electrodes across the material. Under the inuence of the applied eld, the material becomes birefringent, with dierent indexes of refraction for light polarized parallel to or perpendicular to the applied eld. The dierence in index of refraction, n, is given by

3.2. ELECTRO-OPTICAL EFFECT

59

(3.9)

n = KE 2 ,

where is the wavelength of the light, K is the Kerr constant, and E is the amplitude of the electric eld. This dierence in index of refraction causes the material to act like a waveplate when light is incident on it in a direction perpendicular to the electric eld. If the material is placed between two "crossed" (perpendicular) linear polarizers, no light will be transmitted when the electric eld is turned o, while nearly all of the light will be transmitted for some optimum value of the electric eld. Higher values of the Kerr constant allow complete transmission to be achieved with a smaller applied electric eld. Some polar liquids, such as nitrotoluene (C5 H7 NO2 ) and nitrobenzene (C6 H5 NO2 ) exhibit very large Kerr constants. A glass cell lled with one of these liquids is called a Kerr cell. These are frequently used to modulate light, since the Kerr eect responds very quickly to changes in electric eld. Light can be modulated with these devices at frequencies as high as 10 GHz. Because the Kerr eect is relatively weak, a typical Kerr cell may require voltages as high as 30 kV to achieve complete transparency. This is in contrast to Pockels cells, which can operate at much lower voltages. Another disadvantage of Kerr cells is that the best available material, nitrobenzene, is both poisonous and explosive. Some transparent crystals have also been used for Kerr modulation, although they have smaller Kerr constants. For a nonlinear material, the electric polarization eld P will depend on the electric eld E: (3.10) P = 0 (1) E + 0 (2) EE + 0 (3) EEE + . . .

where 0 is the vacuum permittivity and (n) is the n-th order component of the electric susceptibility of the medium. For a linear medium, only the rst term of this equation is signicant and the polarization varies linearly with the electric eld. For materials exhibiting a non-negligible Kerr eect, the third, (3) term is signicant. Consider the net electric eld E produced by a light wave of frequency together with an external electric eld E0 : (3.11) E = E0 + E cos(t),

where E is the vector amplitude of the wave. Combining these two equations produces a complex expression for P. For the DC Kerr eect, we can neglect all except the linear terms and those in (3) |E0 |2 E : (3.12) P 0 (1) + 3(3) |E0 |2 E cos(t),

60CHAPTER 3. MAGNETO-, ACOUSTO-, AND ELECTRO-OPTICAL EFFECT which is similar to the linear relationship between polarization and an electric eld of a wave, with an additional non-linear susceptibility term proportional to the square of the amplitude of the external eld. For non-symmetric media (e.g. liquids), this induced changed of susceptibility produces a change in refractive index in the direction of the electric eld: (3.13) n = 0 K |E0 |2 ,

where 0 is the vacuum wavelength and K is the Kerr constant for the medium. The applied eld induces birefringence in the medium in the direction of the eld. A Kerr cell with a transverse eld can thus act as a switchable wave plate, rotating the plane of polarization of a wave travelling through it. In combination with polarizers, it can be used as a shutter or modulator. The values of K depend on the medium and are about 9.4 1014 mV 2 for water, and 4.4 1012 mV 2 for nitrobenzene. For crystals, the susceptibility of the medium will in general be a tensor, and the Kerr eect produces a modication of this tensor. Optical Kerr eect (AC Kerr) The optical Kerr eect, or AC Kerr eect is the case in which the electric eld is due to the light itself. This causes a variation in index of refraction which is proportional to the local irradiance of the light. This refractive index variation is responsible for the nonlinear optical eects of self focusing and self-phase modulation, and is the basis for Kerr-lens modelocking. This eect only becomes signicant with very intense beams such as those from lasers. In the optical or AC Kerr eect, an intense beam of light in a medium can itself provide the modulating electric eld, without the need for an external eld to be applied. In this case, the electric eld is given by: (3.14) E = E cos(t),

where E is the amplitude of the wave as before. Combining this with the equation for the polarization, and taking only linear terms and those in (3) |E |3 : (3.15) 3 P 0 (1) + (3) |E |2 E cos(t). 4 3(3) |E |2 , 4

As before, this looks like a linear susceptibility with an additional non-linear term: (3.16) = LIN + NL = (1) +

3.2. ELECTRO-OPTICAL EFFECT and since: (3.17) n = (1 + )1/2 = (1 + LIN + NL )1/2 n0 1 + 1 NL 2n0 2

61

where n0 = (1 + LIN )1/2 is the linear refractive index. Using a Taylor expansion since N L n2 0 , this give an intensity dependent refractive index (IDRI) of: (3.18) n = n0 + 3(3) |E |2 = n0 + n2 I 8n0

where n2 is the second-order nonlinear refractive index, and I is the intensity of the wave. The refractive index change is thus proportional to the intensity of the light travelling through the medium. The values of n2 are relatively small for most materials, on the order of 10 m2 W 1 for typical glasses. Therefore beam intensities (irradiances) on the order of 1 GW cm2 (such as those produced by lasers) are necessary to produce signicant variations in refractive index via the AC Kerr eect.
20

The optical Kerr eect manifests itself temporally as self-phase modulation, a self-induced phase- and frequency-shift of a pulse of light as it travels through a medium. This process, along with dispersion, can produce optical solitons. Spatially, an intense beam of light in a medium will produce a change in the mediums refractive index that mimics the transverse intensity pattern of the beam. For example, a Gaussian beam results in a Gaussian refractive index prole, similar to that of a gradient-index lens. This causes the beam to focus itself, a phenomenon known as self-focusing. Kerr-lens modelocking Kerr-lens modelocking is a method of modelocking lasers via a nonlinear optical process known as the optical Kerr eect. This method allows the generation of pulses of light with a duration as short as a few femtoseconds. The optical Kerr eect is a process which results from the nonlinear response of an optical medium to the electric eld of an electromagnetic wave. The refractive index the medium is dependent on the eld strength . hard aperture Kerr-lens modelocking principle Because of the non-uniform power density distribution in a Gaussian beam (as found in laser resonators) the refractive index changes across the beam prole; the refractive index experienced by the beam is greater in the centre of the beam than at the edge. Therefore a rod of an active Kerr medium works like a lens for high

62CHAPTER 3. MAGNETO-, ACOUSTO-, AND ELECTRO-OPTICAL EFFECT intensity light. This is called self-focusing and in extreme cases leads to material destruction. In the laser cavity short bursts of light will then be focused dierently to continuous waves (cw). The favor the pulses over cw, the cavity could be made unstable for cwoperation, but more often a low stability is a by-product of a cavity design putting emphasis on aperture eects. Older designs used a hard aperture, that simply cuts o, while modern designs use a soft aperture, that means the overlap between the pumped region of the gain medium and the pulse. While the eect of a lens on a free laser beam is quite obvious, inside a cavity the whole beam tries to adapts to this change. The standard cavity with at mirrors and a thermal lens in the laser crystal has the smallest beam width on the end-mirrors. With the additional kerr lens the width on the end-mirror gets even smaller. Therefore small end-mirrors (hard aperture) favor pulses. For a soft aperture consider an innite laser crystal with a thermal lens. A laser beam is guided like in a glass bre. With an additional kerr lens the beam width gets smaller. In a real laser the crystal is nite, but for a soft aperture laser the cavity mirrors are designed to act as a 1:1 telescope imaging the light, which exits an end-face, back onto the same end-face. So for the beam, the crystal looks innite. The length of the medium used for KLM is limited by group velocity dispersion. KLM is used in Carrier envelope oset control. Starting a Kerr-lens modelocked laser Initiation of Kerr-lens modelocking depends on the strength of the nonlinear eect involved. If the laser eld builds up in a cavity the laser has to overcome the region of cw operation, which often is favored by the pumping mechanism. This can be achieved by a very strong Kerrlensing that is strong enough to modelock due to small changes of the laser eld strength (laser eld build-up or stochastic uctuations). Modelocking can also be started by shifting the optimum focus from the cw-operation to pulsed operation while changing the power density by kicking the end mirror of the resonator cavity (though a piezo mounted, syncronous oscilating end-mirror would be more turn key). Other principles involve dierent nonlinear eects like saturable absorbers and saturable Bragg reectors, which induce pulses short enough to initiate the Kerr-lensing process. Modelocking - evolution of the pulse Intensity changes with lengths of nanoseconds, are amplied by the Kerr-lensing process and the pulselength further shrinks to achieve higher eld strengths in the center of the pulse. This sharpening process is only limited by the bandwidth achievable with the laser material and the cavitymirrors as well as the dispersion of the cavity. The shortest pulse achievable with a

3.2. ELECTRO-OPTICAL EFFECT given spectrum is called the bandwidth-limited pulse.

63

Laser media for ultrashort pulses (e.g. Ti:Sapphire) Dispersion management with prism sequences. Chirped mirror technology allows to compensate timing mismatch of dierent wavelengths inside the cavity due to material dispersion while keeping the stability high and the losses low. The Kerr eect leads to the Kerr-lens and Self-phase modulation at the same time. To a rst approximation it is possible to consider them as independent eects. Applications Since Kerr-lens modelocking is an eect that directly reacts on the electric eld, the response time is high enough to produce light pulses in the visible and near infrared with lengths of less then 5 femtoseconds. Due to the high electrical eld strength focused ultrashort laser beams can overcome the threshold of 1014 W cm2 , which surpasses the eld strength of the electron-ion bond in atoms. These short pulses open the new eld of ultrafast optics, which is a eld of nonlinear optics that gives access to a completely new class of phenomena like measurement of electron movements in an atom (attosecond phenomena), coherent broadband light generation (ultrabroad lasers) and thereby gives rise to many new applications in optical sensing (e.g. coherent laser radar, ultrahigh resolution optical coherence tomography) material processing and other elds like metrology (extremely exact frequency and time measurements). Electro-optic modulator The lectro-optic modulator (EOM) is an optical device in which a signal-controlled element displaying electro-optic eect is used to modulate a beam of light. The modulation may be imposed on the phase, frequency, amplitude, or direction of the modulated beam. Modulation bandwidths extending into the gigahertz range are possible with the use of laser-controlled modulators. Generally a nonlinear optical material (organic polymers have the fastest response rates, and thus are best for this application) with an incident static or low frequency optical eld will see a modulation of its refractive index. Types of EOMs Phase modulation The simplest kind of EOM consists of a crystal, such as Lithium niobate, whose refractive index is a function of the strength of the local electric eld. That means that if lithium niobate is exposed to an electric eld, light will travel more slowly through it. But the phase of the light leaving the crystal

64CHAPTER 3. MAGNETO-, ACOUSTO-, AND ELECTRO-OPTICAL EFFECT is directly proportional to the length of time it took that light to pass through it. Therefore, the phase of the laser light exiting an EOM can be controlled by changing the electric eld in the crystal. Note that the electric eld can be created placing a parallel plate capacitor across the crystal. Since the eld inside a parallel plate capacitor depends linearly on the potential, the index of refraction depends linearly on the eld (for crystals where Pockels eect dominates), and the phase depends linearly on the index of refraction, the phase modulation must depend linearly on the potential applied to the EOM. Amplitude modulation Once one can make a phase modulating EOM, its a fairly simple matter to turn that into an amplitude modulating EOM by using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Simply use a beam splitter to divide the laser light into two paths, one of which has a phase modulator as described above, and then recombine the two beams. By changing the electric eld on the phase modulating path, one can control whether the two beams constructively or destructively interfere and thereby control the amplitude or intensity of the exiting light. Applications A very common application of EOMs is for creating sidebands in a monochromatic laser beam. To see how this works, rst imagine that the strength of a laser beam with frequency leaving the EOM is given by Aeit

(3.19)

Now suppose we apply a sinusoidally varying potential to the EOM with frequency and small amplitude . This adds a time dependent phase to the above expression, (3.20) Aeit+isin(t) .

Since is small, we can use the Taylor expansion for the exponential (3.21) Aeit (1 + i sin(t)) ,

to which we apply a simple identity for sine, it (e eit ) 2 i(+)t i()t e e . 2 2

(3.22)

Aeit 1 +

= A eit +

This expression we interpret to mean that we have the original carrier frequency plus two small sidebands, one at + and another at . Notice however that

3.3. ACOUSTO-OPTICAL EFFECT

65

we only used the rst term in the Taylor expansion - in truth there are an innite number of sidebands. There is a useful identity involving Bessel functions

(3.23)

Ae

it+i sin(t)

= Ae

it k=0

Jk ( )e

ikt

+
k=0

(1)k Jk ( )eikt ,

which gives the amplitudes of all the sidebands. Notice that if one modulates the amplitude instead of the phase, one gets only the rst set of sidebands, (3.24) (1 + sin(t)) Aeit = Aeit + A i(+)t e ei()t . 2i

3.3

Acousto-optical eect

Modication of the refractive index by the oscillating mechanical pressure of a sound wave An acousto-optic modulator (AOM), also called a Bragg cell, uses the acoustooptic eect to diract and shift the frequency of light using sound waves (usually at radio-frequency). They are used in lasers for Q-switching, telecommunications for signal modulation, and in spectroscopy for frequency control. A piezoelectric transducer is attached to a material such as glass. An oscillating electric signal drives the transducer to vibrate, which creates sound waves in the glass. These can be thought of as moving periodic planes of expansion and compression that change the index of refraction. Incoming light scatters (Brillouin scattering) o the resulting periodic index modulation and interference occurs similar to in Bragg diraction. The interaction can be thought of as four-wave mixing between phonons and photons. The properties of the light exiting the AOM can be controlled in ve ways: Deection A diracted beam emerges at an angle that depends on the wavelength of the light relative to the wavelength of the sound (3.25) sin = m 2

where m = ...-2,-1,0,1,2,... is the order of diraction. As the AOM get thicker only phasematched orders are diracted, this is called Bragg diraction. The angular deection can range from 1 to 5000 beam widths (the number of resolvable spots). Consequently, the deection is typically limited to tens of milliradians.

3.3. ACOUSTO-OPTICAL EFFECT

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Intensity The amount of light diracted by the sound wave depends on the intensity of the sound. Hence, the intensity of the sound can be used to modulate the intensity of the light in the diracted beam. Typically, the intensity that is diracted into m=0 order can be varied between 15% to 99% of the input light intensity. Likewise, the intensity of the m=1 order can be varied between 0% and 80%. Frequency One dierence from Bragg diraction is that the light is scattering from moving planes. A consequence of this is the frequency of the diracted beam f in order m will be Doppler-shifted by an amount equal to the frequency of the sound wave F. (3.26) f f + mF

This frequency shift is also required by the fact that energy and momentum (of the photons and phonons) are conserved in the process. A typical frequency shift varies from 27 MHz, for a less-expensive AOM, to 400 MHz, for a state-of-the-art commercial device. In some AOMs, two acoustic waves travel in opposite directions in the material, creating a standing wave. Diraction from the standing wave does not shift the frequency of the diracted light. Phase In addition, the phase of the diracted beam will also be shifted by the phase of the sound wave. The phase can be changed by an arbitrary amount. Polarization Collinear transversal acoustic waves or perpendicular longitudinal waves can change the polarization. The acoustic waves induce a birefringent phaseshift, much like in a Pockels cell. The acousto-optic tunable lter, especially the dazzler, which can generate variable pulse shapes, is based on this principle. Realization Acousto-optic modulators are much faster than typical mechanical devices such as tiltable mirrors. The time it takes an AOM to shift the exiting beam in is roughly limited to the transit time of the sound wave across the beam (typically 5 to 100 microseconds). This is fast enough to create active modelocking in an ultrafast laser. When faster control is necessary electro-optic modulators are used. However, these require very high voltages (e.g. 10 kilovolts), whereas AOMs oer more deection range, simple design, and low power consumption (<3 watts). The acoustic wave may be absorbed at the other end of the crystal. Such a travelling-wave geometry allows to achieve a broad modulation bandwidth of many megahertz. Other devices are resonant for the sound wave, exploiting the strong