Performance of mercurous chloride acousto-optic devices

The suitability of mercurous chloride for commercial applications was examined by fabricating Bragg cells and acousto-optic tunable filters (AOTF). The acoustic attenuation measurements showed that for operation at a center frequency of 30 MHz, it should be possible to build a Bragg cell with over 8000 resolution elements. For a frequency of 50 MHz, 6000 resolution elements can be achieved with an aperture smaller than 10 cm which is a significant advancement in the state of the art, and is superior to that tellurium dioxide. The AOTF was tested by measuring the transmission at 3.39 μm. The peak response was observed at 18.9 MHz and the fwhm was about 0.58 MHz, corresponding to a 3% of center wavelength resolution, which were excellent agreement with the theory.