Using degenerate parametric interaction of intense acoustic beams to amplify weak signals

Abstract

The paper considers the degenerate parametric interaction of an intense acoustic pumping beam and a weak signal beam at the subharmonic. The use of a special emitter system with independent signal emission at the harmonic and subharmonic made it possible to study the features of nonlinear interaction both for different amplitude levels and arbitrary phase relations of the fields at these frequencies. Just as predicted in the theory, the experiment showed that signal amplification at the subharmonic hardly occurs at all. It is shown that the use of odd field harmonics, which are absent for a zero amplitude of the signal wave, makes it possible to substantially increase the efficiency of isolating a weak signal wave. The interaction of beams for large and small acoustic Reynolds numbers of the signal wave is studied.