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

The Green's function model of the acoustooptic modulator proposed by E. I. Gordon et al. is reformulated in Fourier transform space to simplify the mathematics and to underscore the physics. Numerical studies of response to sinusoidal video signals and to square pulse trains indicate that the modulator can be approximated by a linear invariant model with a suitably scaled Gaussian impulse response. An angular scattering window analogy is proposed to explain the characteristics of the modulator.