Recent Advances in Adaptive Receivers For Laser-Generated Ultrasound

Marvin Klein
Bruno Pouet
G. David Bacher
Lasson Technologies
6059 Bristol Parkway
Culver City, CA 90230,USA

- International Symposium on NDT

Abstract
Laser ultrasonics is a promising new technique for remote, noncontact ultrasonic inspection. In this
technique, a pulsed laser is used to generate an ultrasonic pulse in the sample under inspection and a
cw laser interferometer is used to detect the small displacements generated where the ultrasonic pulse
reaches the surface.
Lasers are quite effective in generating ultrasound, but until recently, laser ultrasonic receivers were
not as sensitive as required. Most laser ultrasonic receivers use an interferometer for detection.
Conventional interferometers suffer from loss of performance because they can not process speckled
beams from rough surfaces. They also require exact path length matching for linear signal detection.
In this paper, we will describe a new family of compensated interferometers using photorefractive
crystals as real-time holograms or as adaptive photodetectors. These receivers require no path-length
stabilization and can process speckled beams with no loss in signal-to-noise. They can also
compensate for dynamic wavefront distortions due to mechanical vibrations or turbulence in the
propagation path.
Keywords: laser-based ultrasound, homodyne, photo-emf, two-wave mixing
Introduction
Laser-based ultrasound (LBU) is a noncontact inspection technique with the potential for in-process
sensing, manufacturing quality control and in-service inspection (see Figure 1)[1]. Although the
methods of generation and detection are very different from contact ultrasonics, the ultrasonic wave
interactions inside the part are very similar. The normal complement of waves (compressional, shear,
surface and plate) can be generated, and familiar inspection geometries (pulse-echo, through-
transmission and pitch-catch) can be used. Particularly large wave amplitudes are observed when the
generation laser is allowed to ablate a thin layer of material from the incident surface.
LBU has a number of unique features:

1. Its noncontact nature avoids mechanical loading of the workpiece and allows
inspection of parts moving at high speeds (up to at least 20 m/s)
 2. Its remote standoff capability allows inspection of parts in adverse manufacturing
conditions, including high temperatures, vacuum or plasmas
3. The use of scanning mirrors and fiber optics allows reconfigurable probing

Fig 1: Schematic diagram of laser ultrasonic inspection system in pulse echo mode.

of complex-shaped parts without conformal surface tracking and (4) the high bandwidth of
laser generated waves enhances spatial resolution and provides more reliable defect detection,
compared with transducer-based measurements.
In general, ultrasonic signals produced by ablation have larger amplitudes and higher bandwidths than
those produced by conventional contact transducers. However, interferometric receivers, while having
higher bandwidth, are generally less sensitive than contact transducers for detection of ultrasonic
signals. In recent years, there has been considerable interest in improving the performance of laser
ultrasonic receivers. In response, a new class of adaptive interferometers has been developed to detect
the small ultrasonic surface displacements encountered in typical measurement conditions. Unlike
conventional homodyne or heterodyne interferometers, these adaptive laser ultrasonic receivers allow
the efficient processing of speckled beams that are received from rough surfaces and/or from
multimode fibers. In addition, they can compensate for dynamic wavefront changes resulting from
beam scanning, workpiece motion or atmospheric turbulence.
Laser interferometers have been used for many years (1) to detect small-amplitude surface
displacements that are produced when an ultrasonic wave reaches the detected surface. As originally
developed, passive homodyne or heterodyne interferometers with coherent detection could not operate
effectively with the speckled input beams that result from interrogating a rough surface with a laser
probe beam. In addition, accurate path length stabilization (homodyne) or postprocessing electronics
(heterodyne) were required for effective operation. The later development of time-delay
interferometers, such as the confocal Fabry-Perot, has allowed the processing of light scattered from a
rough surface with a large field of view[2]. The confocal Fabry-Perot can respond very rapidly to
changing input wavefronts and has high sensitivity, with measured values approaching the shot noise
limit. However, the confocal Fabry-Perot still requires stabilization of the interferometer length to a
fraction of an optical wavelength, thereby adding complexity and cost to the receiver.
More recently, a number of laser ultrasonic receivers based on adaptive reference-beam
interferometers have been developed to process speckled beams with time-varying wavefronts
resulting from mechanical disturbances or workpiece motion. These adaptive reference-beam
interferometers have several advantages over passive reference-beam interferometers such as the
Michelson or Mach-Zehnder:
 1. No path-length stabilization is required
2. The intrinsic device field-of-view is higher
3. Mechanical stability tolerances are greatly reduced
4. Low frequency wavefront disturbances resulting from turbulence and mechanical
disturbances can be compensated.
Two-Wave Mixing
Current receiver development efforts are focused on approaches based on two-wave mixing or on
photo-emf detection. In the two-wave mixing approach (see Figure 2), the photorefractive medium
acts as an adaptive beamsplitter, combining a distorted signal beam with a plane-wave reference beam
and matching their wavefronts for homodyne detection. To provide linear detection of a temporally
phase-modulated signal beam, the phases of the two combined beams must be biased in quadrature for
optimum sensitivity. In contrast with the confocal Fabry-Perot interferometer, no path-length
stabilization is required to maintain this condition.

Fig 2: Schematic
diagram of a laser ultrasonic receiver based on two-wave mixing.
One feature of the two-wave mixing approach is that there is no material-related upper limit on the
ultrasonic signal bandwidth. The upper limit is determined only by the bandwidth of the conventional
photodetector. By contrast, the wavefront distortion compensation bandwidth is determined by the
response time of the photorefractive grating. The grating response time also determines the maximum
scan rate for scanning applications. For many industrial applications, a compensation bandwidth of at
least 1 kHz is required. The requirement for a short response time favors the photorefractive
semiconductors. In recent experiments using bulk InP and CdTe[3] as well as photorefractive multiple
quantum wells[4], such bandwidths have been observed. For inspection applications in a static
environment, slower, more efficient materials such as BaTiO3 may be used.
Photo-Emf Detection
The other approach under development at this time is based on a reference-beam interferometer with
photo-emf detection, as shown in Figure 3[5]. In this case, the photo-emf element performs the dual
function of laser-based ultrasonic detection as well as optical distortion compensation in a single
semiconductor crystal. As before, the speckled signal beam interferes with the reference beam in a
photorefractive material, producing a spatially modulated conductivity pattern, which leads to the
production of a spatially periodic space charge field via the normal carrier migration and trapping
process. The small phase modulation on the signal beam imparted by the surface motion causes a
lateral vibration of the periodic free carrier grating, which induces an ac current that is proportional to
the modulation amplitude and to the total power. This current is only produced when the frequency of
the ultrasonic phase modulation is faster than the grating relaxation rate. When the modulation
frequency is lower than the grating relaxation rate, the space charge field grating can follow the
motion of the fringes and no current is produced. Thus, the grating relaxation rate is equivalent to the
compensation bandwidth defined above and the photo-emf receiver has the desirable property of
reduced sensitivity for noise-related frequencies below this bandwidth.

Fig 3: Schematic diagram of a laser ultrasonic receiver based on photo-emf detection.

As mentioned above, the major advantage of the photo-emf approach is that it combines the separate
optical compensation and detection stages in the two-wave mixing approach into a single
semiconductor element, without the need for an optical readout beam or an electro-optical response.
Since no transmitted beams are required, a laser wavelength with a photon energy larger than the
bandgap can be used. At these wavelengths the large value of absorption coefficient provides a very
fast grating relaxation rate for modest levels of probe laser power. In the case of GaAs, this rapid
relaxation rate allows compensation of wavefront distortions at bandwidths exceeding 100 kHz, as
well as measurements on samples moving at speeds greater than 20 m/s[6]. The upper limit on the
ultrasonic signal processing bandwidth is determined by the recombination rate, which is ~80 MHz in
conventional semi-insulating GaAs. In recent experiments, we have also shown that photo-emf
detectors with interdigitated electrodes can produce an improvement of at least 10x in the responsivity
of these devices.
References
1. C. B. Scruby and L. E. Drain, Laser Ultrasonics: Techniques and Applications, Adam Hilgar,
Bristol, 1990.
2. J.-P. Monchalin and R. Heon, Mater. Eval. 44, 1231 (1986).
3. A. Blouin, P. Delaye, D. Drolet, L.-A. de Montmorillon, J.C. Launay, G. Roosen and J.-P.
Monchalin, "Optical detection of ultrasound using two-wave mixing in semiconductor
photorefractive crystals and comparison with the Fabry-Perot," in Nondestructive
Characterization of Materials VIII, Ed. by R.E. Green, Jr., Plenum Press, New York, 1998,
pp. 13-20
4. I. Lahiri, L.J. Pyrak-Nolte, D.D. Nolte, M.R. Melloch, R.A. Kruger, G.D. Bacher and M.B.
Klein, "Laser-based ultrasound detection using photorefractive multiple quantum wells,"
Appl. Phys. Lett. 73, (8) 1041 (1998).
5. P.V. Mitchell, G.J. Dunning, S.W. McCahon, M.B. Klein, T.R. O'Meara and D.M. pepper,
"Compensated high-bandwidth laser ultrasonic detector based on photo-induced emf in
GaAs," in Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation, Ed. by D.O.
Thompson and D.E. Chimenti, Plenum Press, New York, 1996, Vol. 15, pp. 2149-2155.
6. B. Pouet, E. Lafond, B. Pufahl, D. Bacher, P. Brodeur and M. Klein, "On-machine
characterization of moving paper using a photo-emf laser ultrasonics method," to be
published in Proc. SPIE, 3589 (1999).
7. D.D. Nolte, J.A. Coy, G.J. Dunning, D.M. Pepper, M.P. Chiao, G.D. Bacher and M.B. Klein,
Opt. Lett. 24, 342-344 (1999).

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