It is shown that direct information from surface acoustic waves (SAWs) of bulk transparent materials can be obtained by using Brillouin light scattering (BLS). The study of surface phonons by means of an optical spectroscopy such as BLS has been historically constrained to nontransparent and highly reflecting bulk and film samples or even to very thin films deposited on reflecting substrates. Probably due to its low signal and to the narrow window in experimental conditions, it was assumed for years that bulk transparent samples were not suited for Brillouin spectroscopy in order to get information on SAWs, negating this optical technique in the search for SAW properties. The reported experiments on transparent glasses and single crystals (cubic MgO and trigonal sapphire) prove that there is no intrinsic physical reason not to collect SAW propagation velocity data from transparent bulk samples and opens a challenge to apply the Brillouin spectroscopy in a wider scenario to obtain direct information, in a nondestructive and contactless way, about SAWs in bulk materials.

• Received 11 February 2016
• Revised 25 May 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.94.014313