OPTICAL DEFLECTION DEVICE

摘要

PURPOSE:To obtain high deflection efficiency by forming a surface acoustic wave guide for confining and propagating the surface acoustic wave from a place where a surface acoustic wave generating means is provided to the region for the interaction of light and surface acoustic wave on a substrate. CONSTITUTION:This device is formed with the optical waveguide 12 by thermally diffusing Ti on the substrate 11 consisting of an LiNbO3 single crystal and is used to deflect the light by the interaction of the light propagating in the waveguide 12 and the surface acoustic wave (hereafter expressed as SAW). The waveguide 16 for SAW for confining and propagating the SAW from the place where the SAW generating means is provided to the region for the interaction of the light and SAW is formed on the substrate 11. The SAW generated from the SAW generator having the finite aperture advances in the waveguide 16 by being confined therein and therefore the SAW deviates laterally from the propagation direction without having a spread, thus most of the SAW contributes to the Bragg diffraction of light and consequently the high polarization efficiency is attained even with the SAW having the small power.