Mathematical Description of Acousto-Optic Tunable Filter Orthogonal Polarizing Method

【Abstract】 The transfer function of the optical splitting system of the acousto-optic tunable filter （AOTF） is deduced to be a reference to optical design. The characteristic matrix （transfer function） of AOTF is used to describe quantitatively the characters of polarization elements in the orthogonal polarizing system. According to the characteristic matrix, the included angle of polarizer′s transmission direction and polarization analyzer′s transmission direction should be 90°. As a result the signal to noise ratio increased about 20 times though the light intensity was reduced to 54.3⁰₀,because both the transmittances of polarizer and polarization analyzer are 0.74, which is an intrinsic character. The orthogonal polarizing method is an effective method to get rid of the influence of zero order light and improve the spectrum resolution and signal-to-noise ratio.更多还原