Polarization changes and beam profile deformation of light during acousto-optic interaction in isotropic media

A spatial Fourier transform approach is proposed to investigate the effects of polarization changes and beam profile deformation of light during acousto-optic (AO) interaction in isotropic media. The behaviour of the total scattered optical fields inside the AO cell can be properly described by a vector wave equation of which the permittivity is perturbed by an acoustic wave propagating inside the medium. In the Bragg regime, using a spatial Fourier transform approach, two coupled differential equations can be derived from the wave equation to depict AO interaction in the spatial frequency domain. Analytic solutions, which comprise the effects of changing polarization, beam deformation and propagating diffraction, can be found from the coupled equations. Detailed numerical simulations, including Fourier transforming the incident light profile to calculate the spectra of the scattered light beams and, hence, their profiles in space using the inverse transform, are presented.