Can modulation of continuous light by an optical chopper generate new frequency photon? 
This picture is from thorlabs' website.
Continues light can be modulated by an optical chopper. According to the fourier transform theroy, I think this kind of modulation will bring new frequency compoments to the continues light. However, there seems no energy exchange happen between the new and initial frequency light, I cannot write a suitable equation to describe the energy and momentum conservation process. Therefore, can modulation of continuous light by an optical chopper generate new frequency photon?
In non-linear-optics, Self-Phase Modulation(SPM) and other non-linear effects seems another kind of modulation through light-matter interactions. It is clear to me that new frequency light has been generated by SPM since the spectrum is wider after SPM in my experiment. And I can take the new frequency light as another light source by a suitable optical band-pass filter.
Are there any differences between these two ways of modulation? It seems to me that optical choppers cannot generate photons at new frequencies because the principle of chopping is
just periodically blocking the light source.
 A: I think a chopper does alter monochromatic light.
A perfect light blocker is, in principle, generating
an exact out-of-phase replica of the incoming light and
adding it to the light, forming a summed electromagnetic field of zero amplitude.
That kind of light blocker is not nonlinear, isn't
generating any second frequency, so should not add any
Fourier components to the field that would have a
frequency other than that of the incoming light.
The only hitch, is that the real blocker also has a moving edge, and in addition to diffraction at that
edge, some part of the motion might impart a Doppler
shift; so, yes, a light chopper of the ordinary sort
(slotted disk) may somewhat alter the color.
More generally, a modulated light source is not a pure
sinewave, but something akin to a doublet, which
are spaced by the 'beat frequency' which is the modulation (actually, half the frequency of the amplitude
modulation).   I say 'akin to' a doublet, because
such a doublet would not only give a modulated output,
but would toggle the phase of the outgoing light.
So, both the modulation (with a splitting of the frequency) and the chopping are introducing a
wave with opposite phase; the purity of a monochromatic light beam is going to become somewhat less in
each kind of modulation, as a result of the
introduction of the modulator's opacity; we cannot
ignore the action of a light blocker as though it
were an inert object, incapable of being an agent
of frequency change.
