Doppler frequency-shift compensated photorefractive interferometer for ultrasound detection on objects in motion

Two-wave mixing based interferometry has been demonstrated to be a powerful technique for non-contact, broadband and speckle insensitive measurements of the small surface displacements produced by ultrasonic waves propagating in an object. When the object is in rapid motion along the line-of-sight of the probing laser or when the laser beam is rapidly scanned on a wavy surface, the two-wave mixing photorefractive interferometer loses sensitivity to the point it could become useless. To circumvent the Doppler frequency-shift produced by this relative motion, we propose a dynamic compensation scheme. We report a particularly simple scheme to implement this concept by monitoring the low-frequency output signal of a balanced two-wave mixing demodulator whose output is proportional to the frequency difference between the pump and signal beams, and feeding this signal back to the acousto-optic shifter. With this new concept, the two-wave mixing interferometer can operate on objects in rapid motion while maintaining its sensitivity to low frequency ultrasound.