Abstract

The development of the acoustooptic tunable filter (AOTF) and its various optical system applications has already been extensively reported.¹ With the exception of an early report on the results of an imaging experiment,² all the previous publications have been directed to nonimaging types of application. This paper presents a theory based on Fourier optics formulation that describes acoustooptic imaging through birefringent crystals. The theory is applied to the optical arrangement where an AOTF is placed in the image plane of a lens. The image resolution is determined by the angular aperture of the AOTF. Based on the acoustooptic diffraction theory, a set of ray tracing equations is derived that take into account the effect of acoustooptic diffractions and propagation through uniaxial crystals. Numerical calculations using the ray tracing formula have shown that the dominant image degradation appears to be a coma type aberration. Techniques for minimizing these degradations are described.

© 1989 Optical Society of America