Acousto-optic lens with very fast focus scanning

Ariel Kaplan, Nir Friedman, and Nir Davidson

We propose and experimentally demonstrate an acousto-optic cylindrical lens with a very fast (400-kHz) focal scanning. The lens is realized by use of two adjacent

acousto-optic scanners with counterpropagating acoustic waves that have the same frequency modulation but a p phase difference. This scheme completely

suppresses the lateral scan but adds the linear chirp of the two waves and thus functions as a fast focal-scan lens. We also demonstrate the use of this scanning

lens in a very fast confocal profilometer.

"Acousto-optic lens with very fast focus scanning", Ariel Kaplan, Nir Friedman, and Nir Davidson, Opt. Lett. 26, 1078 (2001). (PDF)

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