Acousto-optical third order correlator

An acousto-optical third order correlator consisting of a laser light source, a 2-D acousto-optical diffractor cell with signal controlling circuitry, a pin hole and a CCD connected to a computer for image processing is introduced. The correlator enables an instantaneous computation of a third order correlation map R₃( tau ₁, tau ₂) of an arbitrary signal by way of optical computing. Through experiments, it proved that the system was able to obtain the R₃ map in real-time with minimal image processing in the computer.