Abstract

Thermal-wave fields have been optically generated and measured, using spatially resolved scanning photopyroelectric detection. Both single laser-beam diffraction profiles and thermal-wave patterns from two laser beams, interfering coherently in a manner analogous to Young’s optical-wave experiment, have been produced. The diffraction and interference images have further been shown to be in excellent qualitative agreement with a Laplace thermal-wave propagation formalism, which treats thermal-wave diffraction in the small-aperture approximation. A mechanism for quantitative agreement was obtained after the finite size of the probing metal detector tip was taken into account in mapping thermal-wave fields.

© 1991 Optical Society of America

Theory of photothermal-wave diffraction and interference in condensed media

Andreas Mandelis
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 6(2) 298-308 (1989)

Photopyroelectric spatially resolved imaging of thermal wave fields

Marek Mieszkowski and Andreas Mandelis
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 7(4) 552-557 (1990)

Photopyroelectric thermal-wave tomography of aluminum with ray-optic reconstruction

Mahendra Munidasa and Andreas Mandelis
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 8(12) 1851-1858 (1991)

Diffraction effects in directed radiation beams

B. Hafizi and P. Sprangle
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 8(5) 705-717 (1991)

Alternative theory of diffraction by modulated media

J. Harthong
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 8(1) 3-10 (1991)