Sinusoidal phase-modulating laser diode interferometer insensitive to the intensity modulation of the light source

In a conventional sinusoidal phase-modulating laser-diode (SPM-LD) interferometer, the wavelength of the LD is sinusoidally modulated by varying its injection current. However, the intensity modulation is associated with the wavelength modulation, which affects the measurement accuracy. We propose an SPM-LD interferometer insensitive to the intensity modulation of the light source, in which the influence of the intensity modulation is eliminated by choosing the appropriate sinusoidal phase modulation depth. Computer simulations and experiments are performed for real-time displacement measurement with the proposed SPM-LD interferometer. The measurement accuracy has been improved and the measurement repeatability is less than 1 nm. No additional components are required in our proposed method that leads to a simple system compared with the other previously proposed methods.     

Self-mixing interferometry based on sinusoidal phase modulation and integrating-bucket method

In order to realize real-time displacement measurement with high resolution, sinusoidal phase modulation and integrating-bucket method are introduced in the self-mixing interference (SMI) system firstly. The phase of the laser beam is modulated by an electro-optic modulator (EOM) in the external cavity. Theoretical analysis, simulation results and error evaluation are presented. Experimentally, the micro-displacement of a high-precision commercial PZT is reconstructed and the reconstruction accuracy is on the order of nanometers for displacements of a few micrometers.     

Monitoring of residual stresses in injection-molded plastics with holographic interferometry

Residual stresses are often trapped in injection-molded plastic parts due to the rapid cooling of the material in this manufacturing process. These stresses are a common source of failure in plastic components in automobiles, appliances and computers and are difficult to measure with conventional residual-stress experimental methods. Real-time holographic interferometry appears to be a viable technique to identify and monitor these stresses in plastic parts. In this investigation, holographic interferometry was used to monitor the relaxation of residual stresses in the plastic-molded actuator arm of a computer hard drive. In the first phase of this study, the relaxation of these residual stresses as a function of temperature was observed. In the second phase, the time to completely relax the residual stresses in the plastic part at an elevated temperature, the annealing temperature, was determined. In the third phase of this investigation, the rate of relaxation of these residual stresses as a function of time at various operating temperatures, was studied. Based on the results of this study, holographic interferometry appears to be a powerful research tool in the study of residual stresses in plastic parts. It also has the potential to be a practical tool for the inspection of manufactured plastic parts for the presence of residual stress.     

Diffusion studies in liquids by holographic interferometry

Liquid diffusion coefficients are very important basic data for research and many applications in chemical engineering and in other fields, such as biological systems, pollution control and separation of isotopes. Holographic interferometry technique with accuracy and promptness is one of the most widely used techniques for diffusivity studies. We report an interferometric technique to determine the diffusion coefficient of transparent liquid solutions. As the diffusion progresses with time the refractive indices at different planes in the cell are different, and the characteristic extreme points of the fringe patterns shift outward. The interference fringes was obtained and recorded on a PC using a CCD camera. By judging the interferogram with a computer procedure the concentrations at different planes can be obtained by the relation between concentration and refractive indices, furthermore, the diffusion coefficient can be obtained by calculation. The obtained diffusivity values matched very well with the existing experimental results.     

Generalized linear prediction method in phase-shifting interferometry in the presence of noise

The effectiveness of phase-shifting interferometry (PSI) techniques employing piezoelectric device PZT in the estimation of phase depends largely on the accuracy with which the phase shifts are imparted to the device and the noise influencing the measurement. Several effective algorithms have been proposed to compute the phase shifts imparted to the device and subsequently obtain the phase using least-squares estimation technique. In this paper, we propose a generalized approach, which accurately estimates the phase shifts in the presence of noise. The method is based on the idea of linear prediction and explores the fact that sampling more data frames yields a reliable phase step estimate in a least-squares sense. We also compare our method with a commonly used generalized phase-shifting method based on histogram analysis and show that our proposed approach is highly effective. We also present simulation and experimental validations of our proposed method.     

Quantitative visualization of the laser induced plume behavior using quasi-heterodyne holographic interferometry

It is very important that we understand the dynamic behaviors of the laser induced plume in welding, because the laser induced plume has considerable effects on welding efficiency and the quality of materials. Many experimental studies have been performed in order to observe the plume behaviors using a visualization method. In this paper, we describe the visualization and quantification of the laser induced plumes by pulse holographic interferometry. A pulsed Nd:YAG laser was used for the generation of laser induced plume and a Q-switched Ruby laser was employed to record the weld plume. For qualitative visualization of the laser induced plume, we used the double-exposure holographic interferometry. Then, we chose the quasi-heterodyne holographic interferometry with the dual-reference-beam and phase shifting in order to visualize the plume quantitatively. The experimental results show the visible behavior of the laser induced plume according to a change in the output power of the pulsed Nd:YAG laser and the time delay of Q-switched Ruby laser. Finally, we obtained the quantitative results by using the dual-reference-beam.     

Real-time holographic interferometry using photorefractive sillenite crystals with phase-stepping technique

This work presents a holographic interferometer that uses the photorefractive sillenite crystals in diffusive regimen whose configuration exhibits diffraction anisotropy for real-time holographic interferometry. The writing–reading process of holographic interferogram was done in real-time, connected with an interferogram-analysis method that uses the phase-stepping technique for quantitative measurement of changes on an object. The holographic interferograms from the analyzed surface were captured and they were used to calculate the phase map with four-frame technique. The unwrapping process used was the cellular-automata technique. We obtained quantitative results for some applications: measurements of micro-rotation of surfaces, punctual micro-displacements on an aluminum plate, stress on a dog's jaw, among others; adding new promising applications possibilities for basic research, dentistry and technological areas.     

Correction of quadratic phase error in two-wavelength digital holographic interferometry using laser diodes

We present the correction of a quadratic phase error in two-wavelength digital holographic interferometry using laser diodes. This phase error arises from numerical reconstructions of wavefronts from digital holograms based on the Fresnel diffraction integral. To correct the quadratic phase error, it is numerically produced by computer on the basis of the theoretical prediction and is subtracted from the phase difference map in two-wavelength digital holographic interferometry. Experimental results show that the method of correction in this paper is useful for two-wavelength digital holographic interferometry using laser diodes.     

用全息干涉法测量杨氏模量

通过对悬臂梁受力前后双曝光全息图进行再现，测量出干涉条纹序数与相对应的位置坐标，再利用最小二乘法求杨氏模量．     

Stroboscopic holographic interferometry of vibration with space-variant phase

A method employing pulsed illumination for the holographic analysis of vibration with space-variant phase is described. Superimposition of two stroboscopically recorded interference patterns to get the amplitude and the phase of vibration at the intersections of fringes is suggested. Contour maps of these two quantities over the entire object surface can then be prepared by interpolation. Detailed solutions are presented for single and double frequency vibrations.     

Comparison of the laser ablation process on Zn and Ti using pulsed digital holographic interferometry

Pulsed digital holographic interferometry has been used to compare the laser ablation process of a Q-switched Nd-YAG laser pulse (wavelength 1064 nm, pulse duration 12 ns) on two different metals (Zn and Ti) under atmospheric air pressure. Digital holograms were recorded for different time delays using collimated laser light (532 nm) passed through the volume along the target. Numerical data of the integrated refractive index field were calculated and presented as phase maps. Intensity maps were calculated from the recorded digital holograms and are used to calculate the attenuation of the probing laser beam by the ablated plume. The different structures of the plume, namely streaks normal to the surface for Zn in contrast to absorbing regions for Ti, indicates that different mechanisms of laser ablation could happen for different metals for the same laser settings and surrounding gas. At a laser fluence of 5 J/cm², phase explosion appears to be the ablation mechanism in case of Zn, while for Ti normal vaporization seems to be the dominant mechanism.     

Fast image-processing technique in phase-shifting holographic interferometry

A fast image-processing method in phase shifting holographic interferometry is proposed, in which the complicated phase calculation is completed with a logic circuit and look-up table. An electronic circuit was designed for the purpose. With these techniques, the processing time can be greatly reduced.     

Imaging through animal tissues with CW diode laser based broadband interferometry

We used a CW superluminescent laser diode, a CCD camera and broadband interferometry to image millimeter-size objects hidden in 15 mm chicken muscle, and demonstrate that the resolution and penetration depth is comparable to that obtained with femtosecond lasers. Coherent images are recovered from the diffused background by selectively homodyne amplifying the ‘least scattered light’ and by momentum-space filtering. A scattering rejection ratio as large as 1.1 × 10¹¹ (25 mean free paths) is achieved. We also investigated the limit of spatial resolution of our method in the diffusive region by random-phase path integration. A scaling relation among the resolution, the penetration depth and the coherence length of the light source is derived and verified by experiments.     

Nanoscale deformation measurement by using the hybrid method of gray-level and holographic interferometry

This study extends the use of holographic interferometry to measure the nanoscale out-of-plane displacement with high surface resolution. It is noted that if the deformation is less than half of the optical wavelength, it is hard to find an obvious fringe pattern. Under such a situation, in general, the phase shift method is used. However, it needs to take more than 3 images for phase shifting and phase reconstruction In this paper, a more simple hybrid method of gray-level and holographic interferometry is used to extract fringe skeletons, in which it just needs to take one or two images for the normal deformation measurement directly, even if there exists no obvious fringe pattern. The displacement field with high surface resolution can also be obtained. The proposed method yielded a theoretical precision of 0.15 nm for out-of-plane displacement with a monochromatic CCD camera of 10-bit gray scale (1024 gray scales) sensitivity and microscale surface resolution for millimeter scale object with 640×480 pixels image resolution by an He–Ne LASER (632.8 nm wavelength) light source. The gray-level method is proposed to calculate the non-obvious interferometry fringe by traditional holographic interferometry hologram, and the result showed that this method works for this purpose.     

Impact of an extended source in laser ablation using pulsed digital holographic interferometry and modelling

Pulsed digital holographic interferometry has been used to study the effect of the laser spot diameter on the shock wave generated in the ablation process of an Nd:YAG laser pulse on a Zn target under atmospheric pressure. For different laser spot diameters and time delays, the propagation of the expanding vapour and of the shock wave were recorded by intensity maps calculated using the recorded digital holograms. From the latter, the phase maps, the refractive index and the density field can be derived. A model was developed that approaches the density distribution, in particular the ellipsoidal expansion characteristics. The induced shock wave has an ellipsoid shape that approaches a sphere for decreasing spot diameter. The ellipsoidal shock waves have almost the same centre offset towards the laser beam and the same aspect ratio for different time steps. The model facilitates the derivation of the particle velocity field. The method provides valuable quantitative results that are discussed, in particular in comparison with the simpler point source explosion theory.     

The quantitative analysis of a two-medium mixture using holographic interferometry: the determination of the size corresponding to circular- and rectangular-column voids in a two-medium mixture

The purpose of this paper is to extend the holographic technique to the optical measurement of a two-medium mixture. Assume there exists a void in medium A and the void contains medium B, an experimental technique and the corresponding theories are proposed in this paper, in order to quantitatively determine the size of void in the two-medium mixture. Then the amount of medium B can be determined. An empty glass container was simulated as a void in the mixture. Two different types of glass containers were used and the corresponding theories were derived. The test results show that the errors were in a reasonable range and support the application of holography in the quantitative optical measurement of a two-medium mixture.     

声悬浮过程的激光全息干涉研究

利用二次曝光全息干涉术实现了对单轴式声悬浮声压场的研究.分别拍摄了悬浮不同物体和 不同输出功率情况下声悬浮场的多幅全息图，并进行了对比分析.结果表明，实验中获得的 声压分布图样与由声波动方程获得的理论声压分布基本一致，其相应中轴线的强度分布也具 有很好的一致性.与以往的声场测量方法相比，二次曝光法非接触、无干扰及全场测量的优 势在声悬浮场测量中得以充分体现，该方法的引入不但简化了声悬浮场测量的实际操作，而 且可以更直观地获得全场信息，为优化声悬浮系统提供了实验依据. 关键词： 全息干涉术 二次曝光法 声悬浮 谐振     

Holographic interferometry using a reference wave with a sinusoidally modulated amplitude

A method of holographic interferometry which uses an amplitude-modulated reference wave is proposed for investigating vibration phases. Sinusoidal amplitude modulation of a reference wave yields hologram fringes which are characterized by a function J²₁(α)cos²Δ, where α and Δ are related to vibration amplitudes and phases on object points, respectively. The resultant fringes indicate that vibration amplitude information and phase information are stored separately. The phase information of the vibration is easily obtained as brightness variations of the fringes, independently of the amplitude information.     

Phase modulated gray-scale data pages for digital holographic data storage

We propose a method for gray level holographic digital data storage by using three-gray levels in the phase mode. Gray level data pages are displayed on a SLM operating in the phase mode to obtain a homogenized Fourier spectrum by suppressing the extremely high intensity DC component in the Fourier spectrum of conventional amplitude based binary/gray level data pages. Holographic interferometry has been used to recover the gray level amplitude data page from phase data page. Numerical simulation results are presented for three-gray level data pages. Fourier plane homogeneity, bit-error-rate, storage density, phase modulation error of the SLM, and misalignment tolerances are investigated through computer modeling. A comparison of the present method with the amplitude-modulated gray level case with and without using a phase mask in conjunction with the data page is carried out. An experimental demonstration of the proposed three-gray level phase data page method is also presented.