Fiber-optic acoustic Fourier transducer for audio sound processing

Abstract

We demonstrate a fiber-optic acoustic transducer operating in the audio-frequency regime. The device is made of an array of 120 multimode optical fibers and a photorefractive novelty filter. Each fiber in the array acts as a cantilevered mechanical resonator. The resonant frequencies of the fibers logarithmically sample the acoustic spectrum from approximately 100 Hz to 5 kHz. Laser light is injected into all fibers simultaneously and is reflected from the end of each fiber. An optical novelty filter extracts the acoustic information from the reflected light. The output of the novelty filter is essentially a Fourier transform of the acoustic signal. The background intensity in the transducer output corresponds to a driving amplitude of approximately 50 A. We describe holographic storage of complex sound patterns that use a LiNbO(3) crystal and an acoustic transducer.