Originally Posted by
James Lehman
I got real lucky and got a nice bunch of laser gear all at once. I did have to figure out how to align it by myself, but that was a lot of fun! I have always wondered what is really going on inside the PCAOM crystal. How does it really work to fade the beam?
James.
Acousto Optic. Piezoelectric element that sends acoustic waves trough the crystal.
An acousto-optic modulator consists of a piezoelectric transducer which creates sound waves in a material like glass or quartz. A light beam is diffracted into several orders. By vibrating the material with a pure sinusoid and tilting the AOM so the light is reflected from the flat sound waves into the first diffraction order, up to 90% deflection efficiency can be achieved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acousto-optic_modulator
I hired an Italian guy to do my wires. Now they look like spaghetti!