Surface acoustic wave probe using lensed optical fibers

The investigation of acoustic field distributions on free surfaces is important in several different classes of applications. In this work, lensed fibers were employed in high resolution optical probes. Different arrangements of these probes were studied to characterize surface acoustic flux profiles on integrated acoustooptic tunable filters. These techniques are particularly applicable to the detection of surface perturbations on packaged acoustic waveguide devices, whose design may prohibit the use of bulk optic probes. Experimental results using these novel lensed fiber arrangements compare favorably with investigations performed using the more conventional light diffraction technique