Thermal behavior of acousto-optic devices: Effects of ultrasound absorption and transducer losses

In the present paper we analyze the electric and acoustic losses in acousto-optic devices, especially in their ultrasonic transducers and the related thermal effects. We include electric and acoustic losses into the classical electric equivalent model of the transducer, to explain the characteristics of the measured electric and thermal behavior. Measured temperature distributions on the acousto-optic crystal faces serve visualization of the conversion efficiency of the radio-frequency input to bulk acoustic waves. We show that the pronounced acoustic frequency dependence of the temperature distribution is in correlation with the frequency dependent losses in the transducer and in the bulk. We also demonstrate experimentally the effectiveness of our active and passive heat removing and temperature stabilization methods. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.