Optical Frequency Shifting by Means of
a Rotating Diffraction Grating
W. H. Stevenson
The doppler frequency shift produced in the various diffraction orders of a rotating radial diffraction grat-
ing allows such a device to be used as an optical modulator.
is presented.
Introduction
During the past few years the technique known as
optical heterodyning has been utilized in a number of
interesting experimental studies. Generally these ex-
periments involve frequency modulation of a light
beam (signal beam) obtained from a laser followed by
photomixing' at a square law detector with a second
reference beam from the same laser. The resulting
heterodyne output from the detector contains only
terms at the difference frequency between the signal
and reference beams, thus allowing recovery of in-
formation placed on the signal beam by the frequency
modulation process. Often there are practical ad-
vantages to providing one additional step in this pro-
cess. That is to introduce a fixed frequency shift in the
reference beam by means of some form of single side
band suppressed carrier (SSBSC) optical modulation.
This paper presents analytical and experimental re-
sults pertaining to a moving grating SSBSC modulator
capable of producing fixed frequency offsets in the low
megacycle range. The potential usefulness of this
technique was first pointed out by Suzuki and Hioki.'
One important application of optical heterodyning is
found in the laser velocimeter first described by Yeh and
Cummins' and later employed in various configurations
by other workers.4-' The typical velocimeter shown
in Fig. 1 illustrates a system where the frequency offset
supplied by a modulator offers certain practical ad-
vantages. In this system a certain fraction of the
signal beam is scattered by particles suspended in a
flow field. Some of this scattered light is colinear with
The author is with Purdue University, School of Mechanical
Engineering, Lafayette, Indiana 47097.
Received 2 July 1969.
The theory and performance of such devices
the unscattered portion of the reference beam which
is directed to the photocathode of a photomultiplier
tube. The scattered signal beam has undergone a
doppler frequency shift VD given by
VD = 2V sin(0/2)/Xo, (1)
where V is the instantaneous velocity component in the
direction indicated, 0 is the angle between the reference
and signal beams, and X0 is the vacuum wavelength of
the laser output. (Typical values of 0 and X are 20
deg and 6328 A, yielding a frequency shift of 55 kHz for
a flow velocity of 1 cm/sec.)
Now if a fixed frequency increase R were introduced
in the referencebeam, the output of the photomultiplier
would be v, + VD rather than V. There are at least
three reasons why one would want to introduce such a
frequency shift.
(1) Such a frequency bias would allow one to dis-
criminate between plus and minus velocities when an
oscillating flow was being studied.
(2) A frequency offset would simplify measurement
problems encountered at very low velocities due to low
frequency noise from the laser, 60 cycle sources, and
mechanicalvibrations.
(3) A frequency bias (controllable in discrete or
continuous fashion) would allow one to match the
heterodyne frequency to the characteristics of the signal
processing equipment. This would permit the same
equipment to be used over a wide velocity range.
A number of methods are, of course, available for
producing SSBSC light modulation other than with a
moving grating. One basic means of achieving such
modulation is to produce what is essentially a rotating
birefringent crystal. This introduces a frequency shift
in circularly polarized light passing through the crystal.
The approach proposed by Herriott, 6 for example,
utilizes a four plate Kerr cell with the opposing plate
pairs driven in phase quadrature by a high voltage
March 1970/ Vol. 9, No. 3 / APPLIED OPTICS 649
 HETERODYNEOUTPUT T(y,,t) = 1 + cos[(2w/a)(y, - vt)]. (2)
TO ELECTRONICS

PMT RF
In this expression a is the grating constant. The
1O
|AMPLIFIER| resulting amplitude distribution in the far field is
&,i6328 A FILTER
\ ~~~~t 8~~~AN
DPASS
\ APERTURES FILTER A(st) = ei2 7rtt{o(s) + exp[-i(27r/a)vtj6[s + (27r/a)]
+ 2 exp[i(27r/a)vt]8[s - (27r/a)] }, (3)
V(t) TRACKING
where vois the optical frequency of the incident beam
and the spatial frequency s can be treated as an angular
SSBSC DISCRIMINATOR coordinate. Thus the light frequency in the +1 and
OPTICAL ' SCATTER
MODULATOR BEAM RECORDER - 1 orders has been increased and decreased respec-
RF.
/1BEAM tively by v/a, while that in the zero order is unchanged.
BEAM
FROM-
By inserting a lens behind the grating and a mask with
LASER a small aperture at the lens focal plane either one of
Fig. 1. Laser doppler velocimeter.
these frequency shifted signals may be easily selected.
It is important to realize that the physical origin of
the frequency shift produced by a moving grating is
simply the doppler effect. Thus if we passed light
through a moving ground glass disk and observed the
light scattered in the angular direction correspondingto
power supply. Buhrer and his coworkers 7 -8 have s by means of two very narrow slits we would find the
discussed comparable methods using the Pockel's same frequency shift. The obvious advantage of the
effect in solid state materials. grating is its efficiency; a large amount of energy is
Another basic approach makes use of acousto-optic concentrated in a particular direction and therefore
rather than electrooptic effects. Cummins and his at a single frequency.
coworkers 9 -'0 applied an ultrasonic diffraction cell to
obtain frequency shifting in an optical heterodyne The Radial Grating
system. This scheme is similar in principle to the The radial grating as illustrated in Fig. 3 differs from
moving grating method. an infinite linear grating in two respects; the velocity
Both the electrooptic and acoustooptic frequency and the grating spacing both vary with the radius.
shifting methods have inherent disadvantages when At a particular radius r the frequency in the +1 order
compared to the moving grating method in the fre- will be
quency range where the latter method is usable. They
both require relatively expensive modulating devices
and high frequency power supplies. (The power sup-
plies for the electrooptic modulators must operate at
high voltages also.) Alignment of these devices is Iei27r
( + V)t
also very critical. Frequency shifts below 10 M/IHzare
not practical when using an ultrasonic cell; this in- ei2v/o t
troduces some difficulties in signal processing when
frequency shifts of a much smaller magnitude are present I i27r(Vo- V t

in the signal beam.

Analysis for a Linear Grating
TRANSMITTEDAMPLITUDE {I+cos[ T YIa ]}i2Tv~t
The most useful grating type for producing a con-
tinuous frequency offset is a radial grating which can be Fig. 2. Optical frequency shifting with a moving grating.
rotated about its axis. It is quite easy to predict the
behavior of such a grating from the results obtained
by analyzing an ordinary linear grating moving in a
direction perpendicular to the rulings. This latter
+ APPEARANCE OF VARIOUS
case will therefore be considered first. DIFFRACTION ORDERS
Figure 2 shows the physical model assumed by
-2 -I 0 +1 +2
Suzuki and Hioki consisting of a transmission grating
with a biased cosine wave transmission function moving
perpendicular to a collimated monochromatic light
I/= + V
beam. Both grating and light beam are assumed to be
a 4/ ) =Kr
infinite in extent. The incident light is, of course, =V + rw
diffracted into two orders as indicated in the Fig. 2.
For such a system the amplitude distribution in the = +
Fraunhofer region can be found from the Fourier
transform of the transmission function T(y,,t) where Fig. 3. Use of a radial grating.

650 APPLIED OPTICS / Vol. 9, No. 3 / March 1970

 STOP EG &G
SGD- 100 grating through a simple 0-ring belt drive. (A gear-
I PHOTODIODI
E belt drive was used initially, but proved to be unsatis-
E -- -- -h- _n _--
factory due to the vibration it introduced.) The
sP MODEL 123 m
HE--NE LASER iBEAM
\PA I /f N N f
grating itself was attached to a shaft mounted in two
SPLITTER
,R<TIN (IVN Y ND Barden super precision 38SS ball bearings. A beam
SYNCHRONOUS NAOTOR) FILTER splitter and mirror arrangement allowedthe zero-order
GR TYPE 1900 A and first-order beams to be combined on the face of a
SPECTRUM ANALYZER
AND TYPE 1521-B . photodiode. The zero-order beam was attenuated by a
RECOREER TEKTRONIX
0-60 KHZ 502 A CRO
neutral density filter to equalize beam intensities. A
spectrum analysis of the heterodyne signal was made
Fig. 4. Apparatus for investigation of radial grating modulator with an audio spectrum analyzer having a 10-Hz band-
performance.
width. The 0-60-kHz range of the analyzer limited
the operating range over which the modulator could be
investigated, but the narrow bandwidth allowed a very
v(r) = va + (v/a) (4) accurate measurement of the long term nature of the
output frequency spectrum to be made.
but in this case v = r and a = Kr, where is the A typical heterodyne signal spectrum is shown in
angular velocity of the grating and K is a positive Fig. 5. The 200-Hz half-width indicated was found
constant. Thus the frequency is independent of r to exist over the entire range of measurements, thus
and is given by indicating that the laser itself rather than the mechani-
v = vo + (/K). (5)
cal effects noted previously was the primary source of
this spread. Earlier measurements on laser linewidth
This simple result makes the use of a radial grating by Magill and Young,' 2 for example, produced results
practical. with this order of magnitude.
One characteristic of the radial grating which may Figure 6 shows the beat frequency produced by the
pose problems in some applications is the broadened particular grating used as a function of rotation rate.
angular spectrum in the diffracted orders due to the
varying grating spacing. No difficulties have been
caused by this phenomenon in our present studies, but
I
it should be taken into account when the moving grating
technique is considered for frequency shifting. If
precise focusing of the diffracted beam is not required N
the broadened angular spectrum actually can be ad-
- _
vantageous, since it makes alignment of the two beams < "t
at the photosurface much easier. On the other hand
the hetrodyning efficiency will be reduced if the angular ~cn
0
En
-HALF WIDTH = 0.2 KHZ :t: 0.6 %
spectrum is too broad. 0 r 33.2.KHZ
Other effects which can limit the performance of a Z
SPECTRUM ANALYZER
co ZJ
grating modulator include errors in the ruling, varia- BANDWIDTH = 10 HZ
tions in the angular velocity, and vibratory motion > 1-
caused by poor bearings or by the grating not being _
perfectly flat. All of these defects in the grating or its II
driving mechanism increase the frequency spread in the O-_- . . .
. . 333435
3132
shifted signal. Again, however, we have found these
effects to be minimal in the present studies. Fig. 5. Typical heterodyne signal.
An advantage of the grating modulator which should
be noted is its relative insensitivity to alignment with
the light beam. The basic grating equation for small
angles of incidence and diffraction is" 500-
- = mX/a, (6) N
y 400-
where is the angle of diffraction, the angle of in-
cidence, and m the diffraction order. Thus the net oz 300-
w
deviation 0 - 0 (and therefore the net frequency shift)
in the lower diffraction orders is independent of the w 200-
angle of the grating with respect to the incident beam. 5000 LINES
t 100-
/ ~~a=
=0.00457 cm. AT EDGE
Experimental Results m
, b
0o 1o0o 2000 3000 4000 5000
The apparatus used to investigate the performance of 6000
ROTATION RATE , rm
the radial grating modulator is illustrated schematically
in Fig. 4. A synchronous motor was used to drive the Fig. 6. Frequency shift vs rotation rate.

March 1970 / Vol. 9, No. 3 / APPLIED OPTICS 651

A shift of 500 kHz is probably the largest one would
want to employ with this grating. It is being used
presently in a laser doppler system at the 500 kHz con-
dition with quite satisfactory results.
No particular effort was made in the experiments to
optimize heterodyning efficiency. For example the
path length of the two beams was not equalized as
required for optimum performance when a multimode
laser is used.1 3 Nevertheless an efficiency of at least
50% was observed. The over-all optical efficiency of
the grating was rather low, since the amplitude trans-
mission function was a biased square wave rather than
a cosine wave, thus producing a number of diffracted
orders. In the present application this was not a
serious problem.
Summary and Conclusions
The rotating grating has been proven useful as a
simple and economical means of producing SSBSC
optical modulation. As with any such device the
grating modulator possesses disadvantages as well as
advantages. The broadened angular spectrum in a
given diffraction order, the low optical efficiency, and
the various mechanical effects may limit its applica-
bility in certain situations. On the other hand its
simplicity is a significant advantage in those applica-
tions where frequency shifts of less than 1 MHz are
required.
Two radial gratings of the type used in optical shaft
angle encoders were supplied for the investigation re-
ported by Dynamics Research Corporation of Stone-
ham, Massachusetts. This contribution is gratefully
acknowledged. Adaptation of the modulator to the
laser doppler system was made by E. B. Denison.
This work was supported by the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration.
References
1. A. T. Forrester, J. Opt. Soc. Amer. 31,253 (1961).
2. T. Suzuki and R. Hioki, J. Opt. Soc. Amer. 57, 1551 (1967).
3. Y. Yeh and H. Z. Cummins, Appl. Phys. Lett. 4, 176 (1964).
4. J. W. Foreman, Jr., et al., IEEE J. Quantum Electron. QE-2,
260 (1966).
5. R. J. Goldstein and D. K. Kreid, Appl. Mech., Trans. ASME
34,813 (1967).
6. D. R. Herriott, U. S. Patent No. 3, 175,088 (1965).
7. C. F. Buhrer, D. Baird, and E. Conwell, Appl. Phys. Lett.
1,46 (1962).
8. C. F. Buhrer, L. Ho, and J. Zucker, Appl. Opt. 3, 517 (1964).
9. H. Z. Cummins and N. Knable, Proc. IEEE 51, 1246 (1963).
10. H. Z. Cummins, N. Knable, and Y. Yeh, Phys. Rev. Lett.
12,150 (1964).
11. M. Born and E. Wolf, Principles of Optics (Pergamon Press,
New York, 1964).
12. P. J. Magill and T. Young, Appl. Phys. Lett. 5, 13 (1964).
13. J. W. Foreman, Jr., Appl. Opt. 6, 821 (1967).

Third International Symposium on Acoustical Holography,

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652 APPLIED OPTICS / Vol. 9, No. 3 / March 1970