Observation of the Talbot effect from a surface acoustic wave dynamic grating

Abstract: We demonstrate the dynamical Talbot effect caused by optical diffraction from standing surface acoustic waves (SAWs). The Talbot effect is a wave interference phenomenon in the Fresnel regime, and we observe it with a fiber-based scanning optical interferometer on a SAW Fabry-Perot cavity. By studying the interferometric signal at 1 GHz, we first discover the existence of an amplitude-modulated term, that can exceed in magnitude the usual phase-modulated term, enabling a new way of imaging surface acoustic waves. Secondly, by displacing the acoustic device from the beam focus we reveal the optical Talbot effect, where despite the curved wavefronts of the optical field, the conventional Talbot length appears. As a consequence, the amplitude modulation vanishes at periodic positions of the acoustic wave relative to the beam focus.