Real-time photorefractive interferometer for dynamic phase perturbation by self-interference in LiNbO(3)

We propose a simple real-time system and demonstrate its use for measuring dynamic optical phase perturbation. In this system we used a 0.1-wt. % Fe:LiNbO(3) to record the self-interference grating with incident light. The system is a new kind of real-time holographic interferometer. After rise time in the interferometer, the speed for showing the fringes is as fast as that of dynamic phase perturbations. Characteristics of the interferometer are proposed and examined.     

Measurement of changes in optical path length and reflectivity with phase-shifting laser feedback interferometry

The operating characteristics of a novel phase-shifting interferometer are presented. Interference arises by reflecting the light from a sample back into the cavity of a cw He-Ne laser. Changes in phase and fringe visibility are calculated from an overdetermined set of phase-shifted intensity measurements with the phase shifts being introduced with an electro-optic modulator. The interferometer is sensitive enough to measure displacements below 1 Hz with a rms error of approximately 1 nm from a sample that reflects only 3% of the 28 muW that is incident on its surface. The interferometer is applied to the determination of cantilever bending of a piezoelectric bimorph.     

一种单频激光干涉仪非线性误差修正方法研究

针对单频激光干涉仪在位移测量中存在的非线性误差问题,研究了一种基于几何距离最小化的Heydemann修正算法,使用Jamin干涉仪和纳米位移台搭建了验证性实验。Jamin干涉仪是一种基于平面镜的差分结构单频干涉仪,当被测物体移动时,干涉仪输出两路相位差为90°的正交信号,这两路信号既用于Jamin干涉仪解算位移也用于验证论文的修正算法。实验结果表明,修正后的位移的拟合优度与Jamin干涉仪解算结果接近,决定系数约为1。相比Jamin干涉仪,在压电陶瓷同等驱动条件下,修正位移与电容传感器的位移的残差均较小,修正精度均高于Jamin干涉仪解算结果。     

Precise focal-length measurement technique with a reflective Fresnel-zone hologram

A new technique for precise focal-length measurement with a hologram is presented. This technique is widely applicable and is particularly useful for measuring large, slow lenses. In diffraction, the Fresnel-zone plate hologram emulates the reflective properties of a convex spherical mirror for use during transmission null tests of an optic by use of a phase-shifting interferometer. The hologram is written lithographically and therefore offers a higher degree of precision at a lower cost than its spherical mirror counterpart. A hologram offers the additional benefit of easy characterization by use of the same interferometer employed in examining the test optic. Better than +/-0.01% precision is achieved during measurement of a 9-m focal-length lens by use of a 150-mm aperture interferometer.     

Talbot interferometer with circular gratings for the measurement of temperature in axisymmetric gaseous flames

A detailed study for measuring the temperature distribution in axisymmetric flames by using a Talbot interferometer with circular gratings is presented. We increased the sensitivity of the interferometer by optimizing the pitch of the grating and the Talbot plane. We compare the experimental results with the values that were measured with a thermocouple to an accuracy of ±0.2% of full scale ±4 digits. Good agreement is seen between the temperatures measured by use of a thermocouple and those measured by use of Talbot interferometry.     

新型零差激光干涉仪测量误差因素分析

介绍了新型零差激光干涉仪的测量原理,实验和理论分析了干涉条纹宽度、激光光强、散斑效应对该激光干涉仪测量误差的影响。结果表明,干涉条纹宽度对振幅测量值影响并不明显,测量误差为0.5%;光强变化引起的振幅测量误差为0.5%,光强较弱会增大测量误差;散斑效应引起的振幅测量误差与透镜参数有关,测量误差为0.4%。该新型零差激光干涉仪可有效降低测振系统对测量环境的要求。     

Adaptive optics performance model for optical interferometry

The optical interferometry community has discussed the possibility of using adaptive optics (AO) on apertures much larger than the atmospheric coherence length in order to increase the sensitivity of an interferometer, although few quantitative models have been investigated. The aim of this paper is to develop an analytic model of an AO-equipped interferometer and to use it to quantify, in relative terms, the gains that may be achieved over an interferometer equipped only with tip-tilt correction. Functional forms are derived for wavefront errors as a function of spatial and temporal coherence scales and flux and applied to the AO and tip-tilt cases. In both cases, the AO and fringe detection systems operate in the same spectral region, with the sharing ratio and subaperture size as adjustable parameters, and with the interferometer beams assumed to be spatially filtered after wavefront correction. It is concluded that the use of AO improves the performance of the interferometer in three ways. First, at the optimal aperture size for a tip-tilt system, the AO system is as much as ~50% more sensitive. Second, the sensitivity of the AO system continues to improve with increasing aperture size. And third, the signal-to-noise ratio of low-visibility fringes in the bright-star limit is significantly improved over the tip-tilt case.     

Polarization phase shifting cyclic interferometer for surface profilometry of non-birefringent phase samples

A rectangular path cyclic interferometer has the unique property that the counter-propagating wavefronts travelling in the interferometer arms are folded with respect to each other in the plane of the interferometer although the two wavefronts finally emerge from the interferometer unfolded. A phase disturbance introduced in one lateral half of the interferometer arm is therefore manifested in complementary lateral halves of the observed interference pattern. This phenomenon is utilized to evaluate the surface profile of a reflecting sample placed on one of the interferometer mirrors. The sample phase is retrieved using polarization phase shifting. Experimental results showing three-dimensional surface morphology of a small scale integrated circuitry directly etched on silicon are presented.     

Aberration compensation in a grating interferometer

The transfer function of a grating interferometer with aberrated gratings is discussed. A geometrical configuration is developed that minimizes the aberrations of the output fringes in the interferometer, which is constructed with three hyperbolic gratings. Theoretical and experimental investigations show that it is possible to compensate for first-order aberrations of the interferometer and obtain straight output fringes if a suitable geometric configuration is used for both the recording of the grating components and the interferometer itself.     

Bandwidth limitations and dispersion in optical stellar interferometry

The fringe visibility measured by a stellar interferometer may be degraded if the interferometer uses an air delay line without compensating for longitudinal dispersion. Whereas in such circumstances simultaneous observations across the visible spectrum are shown to be impracticable at baselines as short as 10 m, it is shown possible to detect 95% of the visibility amplitude if the measurements are made sequentially at different wavelengths and the fractional bandwidth Δλ/λ at 950 nm is restricted to less than 10% when the baseline is 10 m, 6% at 30 m, and 3% at 100 m.     

Spot size effects in miniaturized moving-optical-wedge interferometer

In this paper we study the effect of diffraction on the performance of a miniaturized moving-optical-wedge interferometer. By using the Gaussian model, we calculate the degradation of the interferometer visibility due to diffraction effects. We use this model to optimize the detector size required to obtain maximum visibility and study its effect on resolution of Fourier transform spectrometers based on a moving-optical-wedge interferometer. A comparison between these effects in Michelson and wedge interferometers is also presented showing the advantage of the moving-optical-wedge interferometer in suppressing the diffraction effects with respect to the Michelson interferometer.     

Measurement of the nonlinear refractive index of fibers with a rotating nonlinear Sagnac interferometer

We developed a method to measure the nonlinear refractive-index coefficient of fibers using a nonlinear Sagnac interferometer. To enhance the measurement accuracy, we employed a phase-sensitive detection technique using a rotational sensitive property of the Sagnac interferometer. The measured values were reproducible to within 10 % accuracy.     

Interferometric distributed optical-fiber sensor

An interferometric technique is described for detecting and locating perturbations along an optical fiber. This distributed sensor, based on a modified fiber-ring interferometer, has a position-dependent response to time-varying disturbances such as strain or temperature. These disturbances cause a phase shift that is detected and converted to spatial information. The sensor consists of two parts, namely, a reflecting-fiber-ring interferometer and a differentiating-ring interferometer. The reflecting ring consists of a fiber ring with one port of the coupler connected to a reflector. Consequently the output port of the reflecting-ring interferometer is the same as the input port. Because it is an inherent zero-path-imbalanced system, a short-coherence-length source such as a light-emitting diode can be used. Any time-varying perturbation on the fiber in the ring results in a detector signal proportional to the product of the rate-of-phase change caused by the perturbation and the distance of the perturbation relative to the center of the fiber ring. The second part of the system, a differentiating-ring interferometer, consists of the same fiber-ring interferometer modified only slightly. The output of this part of the sensor is proportional only to the rate of phase change as a result of the unknown perturbation and contains no distance information. By dividing the output of the reflecting-ring interferometer by the output of the differentiating-ring interferometer, we determine disturbance location. Results obtained with a 155-m distributed fiber sensor are discussed.     

第三代激光干涉仪

微片激光自混合干涉仪原理上与迈克尔荪干涉仪不同。主要差别是：激光自混合干涉仪的光束照射在被测物上并被反射回激光器被激光器内放大介质放大。作者课题组研究的的激光自混合干涉仪的测量速度达到了1 m/s以上,10 m空程的环境误差小到了40 nm。它具有全固态,可测“黑”目标的位移等性能,又达到了传统激光干涉仪的技术指标。如果第一代光学干涉仪是以光谱灯做光源,第二代光学干涉仪是以HeNe气体激光器做光源的话,固体激光自混合干涉仪因其激光“自混合”原理可看成是第三代激光干涉仪。     

Experimental study of a shearing interferometer concept for at-wavelength characterization of extreme-ultraviolet optics

We describe the experimental evaluation of a shearing interferometer concept for at-wavelength testing of extreme-ultraviolet optics. The concept is based on the Ronchi test, which has been modified by a new design for entrance and exit gratings to suppress disturbing higher-order interference patterns. The interferometer concept has been tested on an experimental setup, of which all relevant parameters have been scaled from extreme-ultraviolet to visible-light wavelengths. A Twyman-Green interferometer has been integrated into the setup for comparison with the improved Ronchi test. A systematic difference of 7-12 mlambda rms has been found between wave fronts measured with the improved Ronchi test and with the Twyman-Green interferometer. Possible error sources have been analyzed. The accuracy of the interferometer is estimated to be 10 mlambda rms.     

Heterodyne interferometric system with subnanometer accuracy for measurement of straightness

A generalized laser interferometer system based on three design principles, i.e., heterodyne frequency, prevention of mixing, and perfect symmetry, is described. These design principles give rise to an interferometer in a highly stable system with no periodic nonlinearity. A novel straightness sensor, consisting of a straightness prism and a straightness reflector, is incorporated into the generalized system to form a straightness interferometer. A Hewlett-Packard commercial linear interferometer was used to validate the interferometer's parameters. Based on the present design, the interferometer has a gain of 0.348, a periodic nonlinearity of less than 40 pm, and a displacement noise of 12 pm/mean square root of Hz at a bandwidth of 7.8 kHz. This system is useful for precision straightness measurements.     

Inspection of commercial optical devices for data storage using a three Gaussian beam microscope interferometer

Recently, an interferometric profilometer based on the heterodyning of three Gaussian beams has been reported. This microscope interferometer, called a three Gaussian beam interferometer, has been used to profile high quality optical surfaces that exhibit constant reflectivity with high vertical resolution and lateral resolution near lambda. We report the use of this interferometer to measure the profiles of two commercially available optical surfaces for data storage, namely, the compact disk (CD-R) and the digital versatile disk (DVD-R). We include experimental results from a one-dimensional radial scan of these devices without data marks. The measurements are taken by placing the devices with the polycarbonate surface facing the probe beam of the interferometer. This microscope interferometer is unique when compared with other optical measuring instruments because it uses narrowband detection, filters out undesirable noisy signals, and because the amplitude of the output voltage signal is basically proportional to the local vertical height of the surface under test, thus detecting with high sensitivity. We show that the resulting profiles, measured with this interferometer across the polycarbonate layer, provide valuable information about the track profiles, making this interferometer a suitable tool for quality control of surface storage devices.     

Phase Shifting Scatter Plate Interferometer Using a Polarization Technique

Abstract

The structure of a conventional scatter plate interferometer is modified by a polarization technique, and a new type of phase shifting scatter plate interferometer is presented. It has both the merits of a conventional scatter plate interferometer and the phase shifting interferometric technique. The working of this interferometer is demonstrated.     

Differential wavelength-scanning heterodyne interferometer for measuring large step height

An interferometer based on the differential heterodyne configuration and wavelength-scanning interferometry for measuring large step heights is presented. The proposed interferometer is less sensitive to environmental disturbances than other interferometers and can accurately measure interference phases. A tunable diode laser is utilized to illuminate the interferometer and thus solve the phase ambiguity problem. Counting the interference fringes as the wavelength is scanned through a known change in wavelength directly determines the step height. Three gauge blocks of different lengths, 5, 10, and 50 mm, are individually wrung on a steel plate to simulate large step heights. Comparing the results measured by the proposed interferometer with those by the gauge block interferometer reveals that the accuracy is approximately 100 nm.     

Noncontact detection of ultrasonic waves using fiber optic Sagnac interferometer

This paper describes a fiber optic sensor suitable for noncontact detection of ultrasonic waves. This sensor is based on the fiber optic Sagnac interferometer, which has a path-matched configuration and does not require active stabilization. Quadrature phase bias between two interfering laser beams in the Sagnac loop is applied by controlling the birefringence using a fiber polarization controller. A stable quadrature phase bias can be confirmed by observing the interferometer output according to the change of phase bias. Additional signal processing is not needed for the detection of ultrasonic waves using the Sagnac interferometer. Ultrasonic oscillations produced by conventional ultrasonic piezoelectric transducers were successfully detected, and the performance of this interferometer was investigated by a power spectrum analysis of the output signal. Based on the validation of the fiber optic Sagnac interferometer, noncontact detection of laser-generated surface waves was performed. The configured Sagnac interferometer is very effective for the detection of small displacement with high frequency, such as ultrasonic waves used in conventional nondestructive testing (NDT)