Abstract

We present a novel scheme with which to detect small ultrasonic surface displacements by use of a photochromic polymer instead of a photorefractive material as an adaptive beam combiner in a two-wave mixing geometry. Poly(methyl methacrylate) is doped with a derivative of zinc tetrabenzoporphyrin that possesses a long-lived triplet state that can be efficiently populated in a reversible manner. The resulting dynamic hologram consists of local absorption and refractive-index gratings, which can process speckled beams reflected from rough surfaces. We believe that this is the first use of a local nonlinear medium for adaptive homodyne detection of ultrasonic surface displacements.

© 2002 Optical Society of America

Photorefractive polymers sensitized by two-photon absorption

P. A. Blanche, B. Kippelen, A. Schülzgen, C. Fuentes-Hernandez, G. Ramos-Ortiz, J. F. Wang, E. Hendrickx, N. Peyghambarian, and S. R. Marder
Opt. Lett. 27(1) 19-21 (2002)

Fast adaptive interferometer with a photorefractive GaP crystal

Alexei A. Kamshilin and Victor V. Prokofiev
Opt. Lett. 27(19) 1711-1713 (2002)

Ultrasound detection through turbid media

P. Yu, L. Peng, D. D. Nolte, and M. R. Melloch
Opt. Lett. 28(10) 819-821 (2003)

Detection of ultrasound-modulated photons in diffuse media using the photorefractive effect

Todd W. Murray, Lei Sui, Gopi Maguluri, Ronald A. Roy, Alex Nieva, Florian Blonigen, and Charles A. DiMarzio
Opt. Lett. 29(21) 2509-2511 (2004)

Photoinduced reversible optical gratings in photochromic diarylethene-doped polymeric thin films

Stefano Cattaneo, Steve Lecomte, Christian Bosshard, Germano Montemezzani, Peter Günter, Robert C. Livingston, and François Diederich
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 19(9) 2032-2038 (2002)