Acousto-optic collinear diffraction of arbitrarily polarized light

Collinear acousto-optic diffraction of arbitrarily polarized light is studied. It is shown that in the general case, the diffraction spectrum at the output of an acousto-optic cell contains four components, which have different frequencies and polarizations. Beats of these components lead to modulation of the intensity of light transmitted through the output analyzer. The amplitudes of the transmitted light components are analyzed as functions of the frequency and power of the acoustic wave for different polarizer and analyzer orientations. Experimental investigations are carried out in a calcium molybdate collinear cell.