Temporal response of the acoustooptic modulator: geometrical optics model in the low scattering efficiency limit

A phenomenological model of the acoustooptic modulator is proposed. The temporal response of the deflected light power is a quadratic invariant function of the video signal amplitude. The two-dimensional response kernel is defined by an overlap integral of the incident light and sound field profiles, similar to a convolution operator. When the incident light is focused to reduce risetime, the light throughput efficiency and the deflected light profile degrade because the modulator is a linear filter with limited angular passband operating on the propagation angle spectrum of the incident light.