Patent ID: 7965437

Claim:
An acousto-optic modulator, comprising: a monolithic acousto-optic (AO) medium having first and second angled faces; a plurality of spaced apart acoustic transducers comprising a first and at least a second transducer both bonded and positioned on said first and second angled faces of said (AO) medium to define first and second acoustical columns in which first and second acoustic beams, respectively, travel in said AO medium, wherein an incident optical beam encounters the acoustic beam produced by each of said transducers sequentially on its passage through said modulator, wherein said transducers are oriented so that a first order diffracted ray from the first acoustical column enters the second acoustical column at an angle of incidence that is outside the acceptance angle θ a of said second acoustic column, and a zero order ray passed by the first acoustical column enters the second acoustical column at an angle of incidence that is inside θa of said second acoustic column, said θa defining a range of incident angles at which a diffraction efficiency for said first order diffracted ray is >50% in said second acoustical column, and wherein said transducers are oriented so that an incident angle of an emerging optical beam from said first acoustical column relative to said second acoustical column is such that the condition θ a ≦4θ B is satisfied, wherein θ B is the Bragg angle.