Optical Generation of Gigahertz-Frequency Shear Acoustic Waves in Liquid Glycerol

• Main Authors: Andrieu, S. (Author), Klieber, Christoph (Contributor), Nelson, Keith Adam (Contributor), Pezeril, Thomas (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemistry (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society, 2010-02-05T14:58:59Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

Picosecond laser ultrasonic techniques for acoustic wave generation and detection have been employed to probe shear acoustic waves in liquid glycerol at gigahertz frequencies. The experimental approach uses a unique laser pulse shaping technique and a crystallographically canted metal layer to generate frequency-tunable transverse acoustic waves, and uses time-domain coherent Brillouin scattering to detect the waves after they propagate through a liquid layer and into a solid substrate. A linear frequency dependence is found for both the shear speed and attenuation rate in glycerol.
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