Piezo-optic surfaces of lithium niobate crystals

A method of construction of the spatial distribution of the piezo-optic effect in crystals is proposed. A particular case of this method is the known technique of construction of indicator surfaces of the piezo-optic effect. The essence of the proposed method consists in determining the difference in the radius vectors of the optical indicatrix perturbed by stress and the free optical indicatrix. It is shown that this difference in the radius vectors is mathematically identical to the law of transformation of the piezo-optic tensor during the rotation of the coordinate system.