Resonant excitation of intense acoustic waves in crystals

The resonant excitation of an intense elastic wave through nonspecular reflection of a special pump wave in a crystal is described. The choice of the plane and angle of incidence is dictated by the requirement that the excited reflected wave be close to the bulk eigenmode with its energy flow along a free boundary. The resonance parameters have been found for a medium with an arbitrary anisotropy. General relations are concretized for monoclinic, rhombic, and hexagonal systems. A criterion is formulated for an optimal selection of crystals in which the resonant reflection is close to the conversion one, when almost all of the energy from the incident beam of the pump wave falls into the near-surface narrow high-intensity reflected beam. Estimates and illustrations are given for such crystals as an example. The intensity of the reflected beam increases with its narrowing, but its diffraction divergence also increases with this narrowing. Nevertheless, the intensity of the beam can be increased by a factor of 5–10 at sufficiently high frequencies while keeping its divergence at an acceptable level. Amplification by two orders of magnitude can be achieved by compressing the beam in two dimensions through its double reflection.