The Interaction of Sound and Light
May 16, 2016 / 6 Comments / in Physics Articles / by Alex Klotz
Estimated Read Time: 5 minute(s)
Common Topics: light, sound, wave, optic,
photoacoustic
I recently wrote a post on my blog about a fairly
esoteric idea regarding sound propagating through
light. This inspired me to write an article about the
more down-to-earth interactions between light and
sound. Light is a transverse electromagnetic wave
and sound is a longitudinal density wave through a
medium, and it’s generally taught that they are Two
Different Things. However, there are a few effects
that involve their interaction. I will discuss three
effects with similar-sounding names: the
photoacoustic effect, the acousto-optic effect, and
sonoluminescence, as well as the general quantum
treatment of sound-light interactions.
Table of Contents
1. The Photoacoustic
Effect
2. The Acousto-Optic
Effect
3. Sonoluminescence
4. Photon-Phonon
Interactions
5. Conclusion
5.1. More Related
Articles
The Photoacoustic Effect
The photoacoustic effect, from the Greek word for
light and the Greek for hearing, is a sound emission
that originates from a change in density induced by
light. A typical example involves a block of stuff that
you blast with a laser. The laser blast causes the
stuff to rapidly heat up and expand, and that
expansion causes sound waves to propagate
through the medium surrounding the stuff. Other
mechanisms don’t involve thermal expansion, but
this one is the most ubiquitous. The photoacoustic
effect was discovered by Alexander Graham Bell,
who was experimenting with ways to transmit sound
over long distances (the telephone of course being
his most famous invention).
Ultrasonic
Pulsedlaser emission
excitation
Ultrasonic
detection
Laser/ Thermal Acoustic Ultrasonic Image
RFpulse Absorption detection formation
expansion waves
Photoacoustic imaging. Image from Wikipedia.
One of the applications of this effect is photoacoustic
imaging, a biomedical imaging technique that
involves blasting tissue with a laser and then
detecting the sound waves with a piezoelectric
ultrasound transducer. It can be advantageous over
pure ultrasound imaging because the laser pulse
overcomes limitations involving the propagation of
sound through tissue (although now you have issues
involving light propagation). One of the reasons this
might be useful is because tumors tend to have
different elastic and thermal properties compared to
regular tissue (cancer cells are generally squishier,
for instance), so both the absorption of the light and
the propagation of the sound would help pinpoint the
presence of a tumor. Looking through the recent
literature on the topic, it appears that photoacoustics
are rarely used by themselves, but in tandem with
other modalities such as MRI or fluorescence
imaging, to get an overall better picture of what’s
happening inside the body.
The Acousto-Optic Effect
The
Light diffracts off the sound.
acousto-optic effect, combining the Greek roots for
hearing and seeing, is the scattering of light due to a
change in the index of refraction of a material that
arises as a sound wave passes through and
changes the density. Because the change in density
from the sound wave is periodic, the light essentially
experiences a diffraction grating, with bands of light
going off at different angles from the region of the
density wave. This was predicted by Brillouin in the
1920s and observed experimentally by Debye and
others in the 1930s.
There is a
technology called
an acousto-optic
tunable filter
(AOTF), also
known as an
acousto-optic
modulator. It
involves a
transducer and an
acoustic absorber
on opposite sides
Acousto-optic modulation, from of a quartz lens,
Wikipedia. creating a
standing wave
within the lens, that can be modulated by changing
the waveform coming from the transducer. As light
passes through the lens (let’s say as part of a
microscope), the user can dynamically move the
focus by tuning the standing wave in the glass or
even have multiple foci. When the lens is used for
optical tweezers (trapping an object at a laser’s
focus with electromagnetic forces), an AOTF can be
used to move the focus, and therefore the trapped
object. Below is a video of some Finns using this to
control four beads and have them dance around at
will.
Sonoluminescence
Sonoluminescence,
from the Latin for
sound and light, is a
phenomenon that
involves a collapsing
bubble emitting a
flash of light. I used to The light at the end of the bubble.
be a bubble scientist
so this is one of my favorite effects; I have written
about it before on PhysicsForums and on my blog.
Sound waves, when applied to a bubbly fluid, cause
the bubbles to expand and contract due to the
changes in the gas pressure inside the bubbles. If
the bubbles contract by an extreme amount (due to
either the applied sound field or just because they’re
unstably large), almost down to a point, a powerful
shock wave and a flash of light are released. This
was discovered by accident in 1934 when two
German scientists were attempting to use ultrasound
to make photographs develop faster. They noticed
random spots of light appearing on their
photographs, and eventually, it was concluded that
the light arose from the collapsing bubbles. I have
written quite a bit about this in my other article, so I
won’t add much more, but I will just mention that this
is considered a sound-light interaction because the
light is created after the application of sound waves
to the fluid.
Photon-Phonon
Interactions
Solid-state physics was never my strong suit, but I
will briefly mention some sound-light interactions that
occur on the quantum level in crystals.
Electromagnetic waves can be treated in terms of
discrete photons, and likewise, acoustic waves can
be treated as phonons, which are discrete vibrations
of a crystal lattice. Both of these have their ways of
propagating through a crystal, and they can interact
and scatter off one another. Many of the effects that
occur are quantum versions of some of the
aforementioned, including Brillouin scattering, which
involves a photon being scattered as it interacts with
a phonon. Processes like Raman scattering involve
a photon exciting an atom in a material, which
reduces its exciting energy by emitting phonons so
that when it relaxes back to its ground state, the
emitted photon is of lower energy. These interactions
contribute to the overall refractive index of a
material, which ZapperZ comments on here.
Conclusion
I don’t expect the information in this article to blow
anyone’s mind, but these are interesting and
occasionally effects, and those interested in physics,
in general, may be keen to learn more about sound-
light interaction.
Alex Klotz
Ph.D. McGill University, 2015
Assistant Professor, California State University, Long
Beach
My research is at the interface of biological physics
and soft condensed matter. I am interested in using
tools provided from biology to answer questions
about the physics of soft materials. In the past I have
investigated how DNA partitions itself into small
spaces and how knots in DNA molecules move and
untie. Moving forward, I will be investigating the
physics of non-covalent chemical bonds using “DNA
chainmail” and exploring non-equilibrium
thermodynamics and fluid mechanics using protein
gels.
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Tags: photon, sonoluminescence
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anorlunda
May 19, 2016 at 3:42 pm
[CODE]
A photon out cruising at night,
saw a phonon just off to his right.
Said the P to the P,
is it better to be,
a sound instead of a light.
[/CODE]
That was a fun insight. Thanks for
sharing your knowledge.
Is it true that the physics of
sonoluminescence is not fully
understood yet?
Andy Resnick
May 19, 2016 at 3:42 pm
A minor point: in acousto-optic
modulators/scanners/deflectors,
TeO2 is more commonly used rather
than quartz. Some good references
for this (highly complex) subject are
Korpel “Acousto-Optics” , Goutzoulis
“Design and Fabrication of Acousto-
Optic Devices” and a fine chapter in
Saleh and Teich “Fundamentals of
Photonics”.
Greg Bernhardt
May 19, 2016 at 3:42 pm
Nice Insight Alex!
Drakkith
May 19, 2016 at 3:42 pm
Very interesting! I had no idea about
most of those interactions between
light and sound!
Andy Resnick
May 17, 2016 at 1:12 pm
A minor point: in acousto-optic
modulators/scanners/deflectors,
TeO2 is more commonly used rather
than quartz. Some good references
for this (highly complex) subject are
Korpel "Acousto-Optics" , Goutzoulis
"Design and Fabrication of Acousto-
Optic Devices" and a fine chapter in
Saleh and Teich "Fundamentals of
Photonics".
Greg Bernhardt
May 17, 2016 at 12:33 pm
Nice Insight Alex!
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