Diffraction refers to various phenomena that occur when a wave encounters an obstacle or opening. It is defined as the interference or bending of waves around the corners of an obstacle or through an aperture into the region of geometrical shadow of the obstacle/aperture. The diffracting object or aperture effectively becomes a secondary source of the propagating wave. Italian scientist Francesco Maria Grimaldi coined the word diffraction and was the first to record accurate observations of the phenomenon in 1660.
The Doppler effect or Doppler shift is the change in frequency of a wave in relation to an observer who is moving relative to the wave source. It is named after the Austrian physicist Christian Doppler, who described the phenomenon in 1842.
Piezoelectricity is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials—such as crystals, certain ceramics, and biological matter such as bone, DNA, and various proteins—in response to applied mechanical stress. The word piezoelectricity means electricity resulting from pressure and latent heat. It is derived from the Greek word πιέζειν; piezein, which means to squeeze or press, and ἤλεκτρον ēlektron, which means amber, an ancient source of electric charge.
In antenna theory, a phased array usually means an electronically scanned array, a computer-controlled array of antennas which creates a beam of radio waves that can be electronically steered to point in different directions without moving the antennas.
The near field and far field are regions of the electromagnetic (EM) field around an object, such as a transmitting antenna, or the result of radiation scattering off an object. Non-radiative near-field behaviors dominate close to the antenna or scattering object, while electromagnetic radiation far-field behaviors dominate at greater distances.
In optics, the Fraunhofer diffraction equation is used to model the diffraction of waves when the diffraction pattern is viewed at a long distance from the diffracting object, and also when it is viewed at the focal plane of an imaging lens. In contrast, the diffraction pattern created near the object is given by the Fresnel diffraction equation.
An acousto-optic modulator (AOM), also called a Bragg cell or an acousto-optic deflector (AOD), uses the acousto-optic effect to diffract and shift the frequency of light using sound waves. 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 material. These can be thought of as moving periodic planes of expansion and compression that change the index of refraction. Incoming light scatters off the resulting periodic index modulation and interference occurs similar to Bragg diffraction. The interaction can be thought of as a three-wave mixing process resulting in Sum-frequency generation or Difference-frequency generation between phonons and photons.
An ultrasonic flow meter is a type of flow meter that measures the velocity of a fluid with ultrasound to calculate volume flow. Using ultrasonic transducers, the flow meter can measure the average velocity along the path of an emitted beam of ultrasound, by averaging the difference in measured transit time between the pulses of ultrasound propagating into and against the direction of the flow or by measuring the frequency shift from the Doppler effect. Ultrasonic flow meters are affected by the acoustic properties of the fluid and can be impacted by temperature, density, viscosity and suspended particulates depending on the exact flow meter. They vary greatly in purchase price but are often inexpensive to use and maintain because they do not use moving parts, unlike mechanical flow meters.
Grating-eliminated no-nonsense observation of ultrafast incident laser light e-fields (GRENOUILLE) is an ultrashort pulse measurement technique based on frequency-resolved optical gating (FROG). The acronym was chosen because of the technique's relationship to FROG; grenouille is French for frog.
Phased array ultrasonics (PA) is an advanced method of ultrasonic testing that has applications in medical imaging and industrial nondestructive testing. Common applications are to noninvasively examine the heart or to find flaws in manufactured materials such as welds. Single-element probes, known technically as monolithic probes, emit a beam in a fixed direction. To test or interrogate a large volume of material, a conventional probe must be physically scanned to sweep the beam through the area of interest. In contrast, the beam from a phased array probe can be focused and swept electronically without moving the probe. The beam is controllable because a phased array probe is made up of multiple small elements, each of which can be pulsed individually at a computer-calculated timing. The term phased refers to the timing, and the term array refers to the multiple elements. Phased array ultrasonic testing is based on principles of wave physics, which also have applications in fields such as optics and electromagnetic antennae.
Sound from ultrasound is the name given here to the generation of audible sound from modulated ultrasound without using an active receiver. This happens when the modulated ultrasound passes through a nonlinear medium which acts, intentionally or unintentionally, as a demodulator.
Acousto-optics is a branch of physics that studies the interactions between sound waves and light waves, especially the diffraction of laser light by ultrasound through an ultrasonic grating.
Ultrasonic transducers and ultrasonic sensors are devices that generate or sense ultrasound energy. They can be divided into three broad categories: transmitters, receivers and transceivers. Transmitters convert electrical signals into ultrasound, receivers convert ultrasound into electrical signals, and transceivers can both transmit and receive ultrasound.
The Talbot effect is a diffraction effect first observed in 1836 by Henry Fox Talbot. When a plane wave is incident upon a periodic diffraction grating, the image of the grating is repeated at regular distances away from the grating plane. The regular distance is called the Talbot length, and the repeated images are called self images or Talbot images. Furthermore, at half the Talbot length, a self-image also occurs, but phase-shifted by half a period. At smaller regular fractions of the Talbot length, sub-images can also be observed. At one quarter of the Talbot length, the self-image is halved in size, and appears with half the period of the grating. At one eighth of the Talbot length, the period and size of the images is halved again, and so forth creating a fractal pattern of sub images with ever-decreasing size, often referred to as a Talbot carpet. Talbot cavities are used for coherent beam combination of laser sets.
An ultrasonic grating is a type of diffraction grating produced by interfering ultrasonic waves in a medium altering the physical properties of the medium, and hence the refractive index, in a grid-like pattern. The term acoustic grating is a more general term that includes operation at audible frequencies.
Ultrasound-modulated optical tomography (UOT) is a form of tomography involving ultrasound. It is used in imaging of biological soft tissues and has potential applications for early cancer detection. Like optical techniques, this method provides high contrast, and the use of ultrasound also provides high resolution.
Schlieren imaging is a method to visualize density variations in transparent media.
Self-mixing or back-injection laser interferometry is an interferometric technique in which a part of the light reflected by a vibrating target is reflected into the laser cavity, causing a modulation both in amplitude and in frequency of the emitted optical beam. In this way, the laser becomes sensitive to the distance traveled by the reflected beam thus becoming a distance, speed or vibration sensor. The advantage compared to a traditional measurement system is a lower cost thanks to the absence of collimation optics and external photodiodes.
Photoacoustic microscopy is an imaging method based on the photoacoustic effect and is a subset of photoacoustic tomography. Photoacoustic microscopy takes advantage of the local temperature rise that occurs as a result of light absorption in tissue. Using a nanosecond pulsed laser beam, tissues undergo thermoelastic expansion, resulting in the release of a wide-band acoustic wave that can be detected using a high-frequency ultrasound transducer. Since ultrasonic scattering in tissue is weaker than optical scattering, photoacoustic microscopy is capable of achieving high-resolution images at greater depths than conventional microscopy methods. Furthermore, photoacoustic microscopy is especially useful in the field of biomedical imaging due to its scalability. By adjusting the optical and acoustic foci, lateral resolution may be optimized for the desired imaging depth.
A reflectarray antenna consists of an array of unit cells, illuminated by a feeding antenna. The feeding antenna is usually a horn. The unit cells are usually backed by a ground plane, and the incident wave reflects off them towards the direction of the beam. A phase distribution of concentric rings is applied to focus the wavefronts from the feeding antenna into a plane wave . A progressive phase shift can be applied to the unit cells to steer the beam direction. It is common to offset the feeding antenna to prevent blockage of the beam. In this case, the phase distribution on the reflectarray surface needs to be altered. A reflectarray focuses a beam in a similar way to a parabolic reflector (dish), but with a much thinner form factor.
