Impact of a temporal sinusoidal phase modulation on the optical spectrum

Christophe Finot (1) , Frédéric Chaussard (1) , S. Boscolo (2)

1 ICB - Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Carnot de Bourgogne
2 AIPT - Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies

We discuss the effects of imparting a temporal sinusoidal phase modulation to a continuous wave on the frequency spectrum. While a practical analytical solution to this problem already exists, we present here a physical interpretation based on interference processes. This simple model will help the students better understand the origin of the oscillatory structure that can be observed in the resulting spectrum and that is characteristic of Bessel functions of the first kind. We illustrate our approach with an example from the field of optics.

Mots clés: Fourier analysis; Phase modulation; Bessel functions of the first kind

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]

Christophe Finot, Frédéric Chaussard, S. Boscolo. Impact of a temporal sinusoidal phase modulation on the optical spectrum. European Journal of Physics, 2018, 39, pp.055303. ⟨10.1088/1361-6404/aad61c⟩. ⟨hal-01764502⟩