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Concept
Acousto-optic modulator
Summary
An acousto-optic modulator (AOM), also called a Bragg cell or an acousto-optic deflector (AOD), uses the acousto-optic effect to diffract and shift the frequency of light using sound waves (usually at radio-frequency). They are used in lasers for Q-switching, telecommunications for signal modulation, and in spectroscopy for frequency control. A piezoelectric transducer is attached to a material such as glass. An oscillating electric signal drives the transducer to vibrate, which creates sound waves in the material. These can be thought of as moving periodic planes of expansion and compression that change the index of refraction. Incoming light scatters (see Brillouin scattering) off the resulting periodic index modulation and interference occurs similar to Bragg diffraction. The interaction can be thought of as a three-wave mixing process resulting in Sum-frequency generation or Difference-frequency generation between phonons and photons.
A typical AOM operates under Bragg Condition, where the incident light comes at Bragg angle from the perpendicular of the sound wave's propagation.
When the incident light beam is at Bragg angle, a diffraction pattern emerges where an order of diffracted beam occurs at each angle θ that satisfies:
Here, m = ..., −2, −1, 0, +1, +2, ... is the order of diffraction, is the wavelength of light in vacuum, and is the wavelength of the sound. Note that m = 0 order travels in the same direction as the incident beam.
Diffraction from a sinusoidal modulation in a thin crystal mostly results in the m = −1, 0, +1 diffraction orders. Cascaded diffraction in medium thickness crystals leads to higher orders of diffraction. In thick crystals with weak modulation, only phasematched orders are diffracted; this is called Bragg diffraction. The angular deflection can range from 1 to 5000 beam widths (the number of resolvable spots). Consequently, the deflection is typically limited to tens of milliradians.
The angular separation between adjacent orders for Bragg diffraction is twice the Bragg angle, i.
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Q-switching, sometimes known as giant pulse formation or Q-spoiling, is a technique by which a laser can be made to produce a pulsed output beam. The technique allows the production of light pulses with extremely high (gigawatt) peak power, much higher than would be produced by the same laser if it were operating in a continuous wave (constant output) mode. Compared to modelocking, another technique for pulse generation with lasers, Q-switching leads to much lower pulse repetition rates, much higher pulse energies, and much longer pulse durations.
Acousto-optics
Acousto-optics is a branch of physics that studies the interactions between sound waves and light waves, especially the diffraction of laser light by ultrasound (or sound in general) through an ultrasonic grating. Optics has had a very long and full history, from ancient Greece, through the renaissance and modern times. As with optics, acoustics has a history of similar duration, again starting with the ancient Greeks.
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