Out-coupling of Longitudinal Photoacoustic Pulses by Mitigating the Phase Cancellation

Waves of any kinds, including sound waves and light waves, can interfere constructively or destructively when they are overlapped, allowing for myriad applications. However, unlike continuous waves of a single frequency, interference of photoacoustic pulses is often overlooked because of their broadband characteristics and short pulse durations. Here, we study cancellation of two symmetric photoacoustic pulses radiated in the opposite direction from the same photoacoustic sources near a free surface. The cancellation occurs when one of the two pulses is reflected with polarity reversal from the free surface and catches up with the other. The cancellation effect, responsible for reduced signal amplitudes, is systematically examined by implementing a thin transparent matching medium of the same acoustic impedance. By changing the thickness of the transparent layer, the overlap of the two symmetric pulses is controlled. For optimized matching layers, the cancellation effect can be significantly reduced, while the resulting output waveform remains unchanged. Similar to the planar absorber, different dimensional absorbers including cylinders and spheres also exhibit the cancellation between the outward and inward waves. This work could provide further understanding of photoacoustic generation and a simple strategy for increasing photoacoustic signal amplitudes.