Simultaneous compensation for spatial and temporal dispersion of acousto-optical deflectors for two-dimensional scanning with a single prism.

The dispersive nature of the acousto-optical deflector (AOD) presents a challenge to applications of two sequential orthogonal AODs (a two-dimensional AOD) as XY scanners in multiphoton microscopy. Introducing a prism before the two-dimensional (2D) AOD allows both temporal and spatial dispersion to be compensated for simultaneously. A 90 fs laser pulse was broadened to 572 fs without compensation, and 143 fs with compensation. The ratio of long axis to short axis of the exiting laser beam spot was 3.50 without compensation and 1.14 with compensation. The insertion loss was 37%. Two-photon fluorescence microscopy used the compensated 2D AOD scanner to image a fluorescent microsphere, which improves signal intensity -15-fold compared with the uncompensated scanner.