From the Wikipedia page: > Consequently, the deflection is typically limited to tens of milliradians. This is the big drawback with AOMs. They're very precise

From the Wikipedia page: > Consequently, the deflection is typically limited to tens of milliradians. This is the big drawback with AOMs. They're very precise, but the angle through which they steer beams is small. You would need hundreds of scanners to scan a full circle under the best conditions. AOMs are interesting though in that they provide a way to modulate the frequency of the light they deflect. This is how I've seen them used before: as a very precise way to introduce small frequency shifts into a laser beam for physics research.