It's different because they are using a gas as an acousto-optic medium. This allowed them to work with laser intensities that are more than three orders of magn

It's different because they are using a gas as an acousto-optic medium. This allowed them to work with laser intensities that are more than three orders of magnitude above the damage threshold of conventional solid-state acousto-optic modulators. Achieving good diffraction efficiency (they report ~50%) with a gaseous medium is a serious engineering challenge since the refractive index variations due to sound waves are many orders of magnitude weaker than in solids. I would suggest reading the original publication [1] for more details. It's open access. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-023-01304-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-023-01304-y