An Acousto-Optic Method for Measuring the Energy-Geometric Parameters of Laser Radiation

The features of acousto-optic interaction are considered for the case where the duration of an acoustic pulse is much shorter than the time of crossing an optical beam by an elastic wave packet. It is shown that under these conditions the acoustic wave packet turns into a scanning element, which extracts information about the energy-geometric parameters of the cross section of the laser beam. The sequence of extracting information about the configuration of the laser beam cross section and the law of distribution of the power flux density in it is described. The established provisions and patterns are confirmed by numerical calculations. The results of numerical analysis were tested experimentally on a prototype of an acousto-optic processor with direct detection. A comparative analysis of the results of theoretical and experimental studies in the context of the effectiveness of the proposed method for measuring the energy-geometric parameters of laser radiation has been carried out.