{"id":4759,"date":"2018-01-14T22:26:32","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T03:26:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/?p=4759"},"modified":"2018-01-14T22:26:32","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T03:26:32","slug":"laser-power-modulation-eoms-and-aoms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/14\/laser-power-modulation-eoms-and-aoms\/","title":{"rendered":"Laser power modulation: EOMs and AOMs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/aom_eom.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"883\" height=\"928\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4760\" srcset=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/aom_eom.png 883w, https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/aom_eom-285x300.png 285w, https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/aom_eom-768x807.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 883px) 100vw, 883px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Fast laser power modulation in 2p systems is typically done with a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pockels_effect\">Pockels cell<\/a>. Conoptics sells one that is optimized for common Ti:Sapph systems, and that&#8217;s what many people end up using.<\/p>\n<p>Pockels cells are a type of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Electro-optic_modulator\">electro-optical modulator (EOM)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Another family of devices for modulating laser power are <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Acousto-optic_modulator\">acousto-optical modulators (AOM)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>There was a discussion of EOM vs AOM back in October. Click through to read the thread.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Pros and cons AOM vs. pockels cell for 2P microscopy: Does anyone have experience with AOMs for resonant scanning turnaround blanking?<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; H.A. Obenhaus (@Neuroballs) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Neuroballs\/status\/920621295817101317?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 18, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In some correspondence with Coherent, they sent me the chart above, which summarizes some of the differences between AOMs and EOMs. It&#8217;s useful, even if some of the &#8220;weaknesses&#8221; of EOMs are a bit exaggerated (aligning EOMs isn&#8217;t that difficult).<\/p>\n<p><em>Hat tip to Evan Raba and Darryl McCoy at Coherent<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p>Fast laser power modulation in 2p systems is typically done with a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pockels_effect\">Pockels cell<\/a>. Conoptics sells one that is optimized for common Ti:Sapph systems, and that&#8217;s what many people end up using.<\/p>\n<p>Pockels cells&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/14\/laser-power-modulation-eoms-and-aoms\/\">Read More<\/a><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[32,47],"class_list":["post-4759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-laser","tag-two-photon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4759"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4762,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4759\/revisions\/4762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}