Analysis of Phase Mismatch for Mercurous Bromide-Based Non-Collinear AOTF Design in Spectral Imaging Applications

The spectral and spatial characteristics of Acousto-Optic Tunable Filters (AOTFs), such as a tuning curve, spectral resolution, angular aperture, and diffraction efficiency, are determined by the device’s acousto-optic crystal configuration and piezoelectric transducer. For high-throughput spectral imaging applications, it is essential to enlarge the spectral bandwidth and angular aperture during the design phase of AOTFs. Thus, phase mismatch due to incident angle or wavelength was studied analytically using phase diagrams in this paper. Additionally, a performance parameter analysis model was established based on the use of mercurous bromide crystals for large angular aperture AOTF device design, and the impact of crystal and transducer design parameters on the spectral bandwidth and angular aperture was evaluated. This also experimentally validates the diffraction capability of AOTFs made from mercurous bromide crystal, which possess a broad spectral transmission ability ranging from visible to long-wave infrared.