Tunable-optical-filter-based white-light interferometry for sensing

We describe tunable-optical-filter-based white-light interferometry for sensor interrogation. By introducing a tunable optical filter into a white-light interferometry system, one can interrogate an interferometer with either quadrature demodulation or spectral-domain detection at low cost. To demonstrate the feasibility of effectively demodulating various types of interferometric sensor, experiments have been performed using an extrinsic Fabry-Perot tunable filter to interrogate two extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometric temperature sensors and a diaphragm-based pressure sensor.     

Measurement of surface profile in vibrating environment with instantaneous phase shifting interferometry

In-process measurement has been the requirement of the precision industries, but due to vibrations while manufacturing, in-process measurement has been difficult to achieve. There is little work on in-process measurement using phase shifting interferometry, as phase shifting is extremely sensitive to vibrations. In this work, the advantage of the developed non-mechanical and instantaneous phase shifting interferometry is felt while measuring surface profile of large flat surfaces under vibrating conditions which can be extended for in-process measurement of surface profile. A near common path optical configuration is achieved and the effect of the environment is reduced. Moreover, the measurement of phase is instantaneous which increases the versatility of this technique for measuring vibrating objects. Profile measurements were carried out on a smooth mirror surface excited with vibrations of different frequencies and the technique was found to be immune to vibrations of up to 1000 Hz.     

Real time out-of-plane vibration measurement/monitoring using Talbot interferometry

In the present paper, application of Talbot interferometry for real-time vibration measurement is investigated. Experiments were conducted to measure/monitor out-of-plane motion of a vibrating loudspeaker membrane. Experimental results demonstrate that by using Talbot interferometry out-of-plane vibrations as well as phase lag between driving force and membrane oscillation can be measured.     

Time-average hologram interferometry of periodic,non-cosinusoidal vibrations

In the present paper, the method of time-average hologram interferometry has been applied to study periodic, non-cosinusoidal vibrations represented by a Jacobian elliptic function. For such vibrations the characteristic fringe function has been evaluated by making use of an equation derived from considerations of the effect of motion on coherence. Techniques of holographic addition and subtraction and extended pulse stroboscopic holography have been applied to analyze these vibrations in detail. Graphical representation of the fringe irradiance distributions in the reconstructed image is given in all the cases.     

Phase measurement of coherent Raman vibrational spectroscopy with chirped spectral holography

We introduce a nonscanning, time-domain sensitive phase measurement of Raman-active vibrations. Coherent vibrations are set up by impulsive stimulated Raman scattering and probed by spectral interferometry using a time-delayed pair of probe and reference pulses. The probe-reference pair is chirped, and the instantaneous frequency sweep maps spectral phase encoded in the pulses to the time-domain vibrational motion, allowing measurements to be made without a time-consuming pump-probe delay scan.     

Parallel two-step phase-shifting microscopic interferometry based on a cube beamsplitter

Parallel two-step phase-shifting interferometry for microscopy is presented, and the recording condition for generalized two-step phase-shifting interferometry is discussed. A 45° tilted cube beamsplitter enables to replicate the orthogonally linear polarized object and reference waves into two parallel beams, respectively. As a consequence, two interferograms with quadrature phase shift are obtained along the two beams, and phase reconstructed with an improved algorithm. To reconstruct the phase distribution from the two-step phase-shifting interferograms, a certain recording condition should be satisfied. However, the recording condition has not ever been discussed before. In this paper, the recording condition for the two-step phase-shifting interferometry is derived and that is: the intensity of reference wave should be no less than two times object wave intensity.     

基于倾斜相位的抗振动干涉面形测量

环境振动会在干涉测量过程中产生随机倾斜、移相误差,导致测量精度下降。为了降低环境振动对移相干涉测量的影响,提出了一种基于倾斜相位的抗振动干涉面形测量方法。首先,利用Fourier变换将干涉图变换到频域;然后,利用频域细分操作对峰值坐标进行亚像素精度定位,求解出振动倾斜平面;最后,利用最小二乘法计算出待测面的相位分布。实验结果表明,本方法与同步移相法的复原结果具有高度一致性,波面峰谷值和均方根值的偏差较小;且本方法无需对硬件进行改动,可为振动环境下的移相干涉测量提供一种低成本、高精度的解决方案。     

Real-time in-plane vibration measurements by speckle interferometry with the aid of liquid crystal light valve

Real-time measurements of in-plane vibrations by speckle interferometry, which employs a liquid crystal light valve to record speckle patterns, is experimentally studied to be feasible in practice, and preliminary results are also shown.     

THz干涉测量用于障碍物后振动传感的研究

为探索THz干涉技术用于障碍物后振动传感的可行性,采用工作波长214.58 μm （对应频率约1.4 THz）的CO2激光器泵浦气体太赫兹源搭建了一套基于迈克尔逊干涉仪结构的THz干涉测量装置,实验研究了薄纸板遮挡后敲击目标镜产生的微小振动,利用相位分析法和频谱分析法对振动干涉信号进行处理,得到了振动位移随时间的变化以及不同时段振动频率的分布情况,测得的峰峰值振幅最小为7.98 μm,最大为17.54 μm,振动峰值速度为2.7 mm/s,振动频率最小21 Hz,最大58 Hz.研究结果表明THz干涉测量技术能有效克服传统振动传感技术无法穿透障碍物的缺点,是一种简便有效的障碍物后振动传感的新型手段,预示了THz技术在振动检测相关领域的广阔应用前景.     

Monitoring/measurement of out-of-plane vibrations using shearing interferometry and interferometric grating

In this paper, an application of shear plate interferometry combined with moiré readout to monitor/measure out-of-plane vibrations is presented. Moiré fringes are produced between the fringe pattern from the shear plate and interferometric grating recorded by photographing the interference pattern generated from the shear plate. It is demonstrated that the method can be used to study periodic and non-periodic vibrations.     

Characterization of a broadband pulse for phase controlled multiphoton microscopy by single beam SPIDER

We present what we believe to be a new version of spectral phase interferometry for direct electric field reconstruction (SPIDER) using only a single-phase and polarization controlled laser beam. Two narrow pulses and one broadband pulse are selected out of an ultrafast laser pulse by a polarization and phase control technique to generate second harmonic generation (SHG) signals, which are equivalent to a spectral shear interferogram in the conventional SPIDER method. The spectral phase of the broadband laser pulse is extracted analytically with double quadrature spectral interferometry (DQSI). An arbitrary spectral phase can be retrieved with great precision and compensated in situ at the sample position of a microscope. This new method requires no separate reference beam and is suitable for nonlinear optical microscopy with a phase controlled laser pulse.     

Dual-wavelength laser source for onboard atom interferometry

We present a compact and stable dual-wavelength laser source for onboard atom interferometry with two different atomic species. It is based on frequency-doubled telecom lasers locked on a femtosecond optical frequency comb. We take advantage of the maturity of fiber telecom technology to reduce the number of free-space optical components, which are intrinsically less stable, and to make the setup immune to vibrations and thermal fluctuations. The source provides the frequency agility and phase stability required for atom interferometry and can easily be adapted to other cold atom experiments. We have shown its robustness by achieving the first dual-species K-Rb magneto-optical trap in microgravity during parabolic flights.     

Quantitative vibration amplitude measurement with time-averaged digital speckle pattern interferometry

A new method of using time-averaged digital speckle pattern interferometry for the quantitative measurement of vibration amplitude was developed. Signal processing techniques especially the Hilbert transformation for quantitative evaluation of the Bessel fringes obtained in time-averaged digital speckle pattern interferometry were explored. The quadrature signal after Hilbert transformation is equivalent to a 90° phase-shifted interferogram for a monotonically increasing or decreasing phase function. An algorithm was developed for Bessel fringe contrast enhancement and phase extraction. The techniques were tested numerically and experimentally. Sub-fringe quantification of the time-averaged vibration fringes is realised with the proposed method. Compared with the commonly used phase shift method which requires a minimum of two images for image processing, this method requires only one fringe pattern for data extraction.     

Quadrature spectral interferometric detection and pulse shaping

We introduce a new variant of spectral interferometry, using spectrally dispersed ultrafast laser pulses and quadrature detection to measure optical thickness variations related to surface structure. We can resolve surface features with depths of 3 mm to 25 nm, using a lateral resolution of ~100mum . Quadrature detection gives a larger dynamic range and solves the sign ambiguity problem. This method has potential applications in device manufacture, optical communications, and error compensation in pulse shaping.     

频闪剪切散斑干涉术的研究

提出了一种用于振动研究的方法——频闪剪切散斑干涉照相法。该方法由于采用了剪切镜,能得到较为精确的散斑剪切图,提高了测量的精度,是一种用于振动研究较为理想的散斑照相的新方法。讨论了频闪剪切散斑干涉术的基本原理,给出了频闪剪切散斑图的全场分析的平均光强分析的解析式,并给出了实验结果。理论和实验都表明频闪剪切散斑干涉照相法要优于时间平均剪切散斑干涉照相法。该方法在全场滤波分析时,能给出任一瞬时物体振动信息,得到清晰的、高衬比的全场干涉条纹图,是一种实用可行的方法。     

On the Complementarity of the Quadrature Observables

In this paper we investigate the coupling properties of pairs of quadrature observables, showing that, apart from the Weyl relation, they share the same coupling properties as the position-momentum pair. In particular, they are complementary. We determine the marginal observables of a covariant phase space observable with respect to an arbitrary rotated reference frame, and observe that these marginal observables are unsharp quadrature observables. The related distributions constitute the Radon transform of a phase space distribution of the covariant phase space observable. Since the quadrature distributions are the Radon transform of the Wigner function of a state, we also exhibit the relation between the quadrature observables and the tomography observable, and show how to construct the phase space observable from the quadrature observables. Finally, we give a method to measure together with a single measurement scheme any complementary pair of quadrature observables.     

Instantaneous quadrature components or Jones vector retrieval using the Pancharatnam-Berry phase in frequency domain low-coherence interferometry

We use the Pancharatnam-Berry phase as a multifunctional tool for low-coherence interferometry. This geometric phase shift enables instantaneous retrieval of the quadrature components of the complex interferometric signal. The phase shift is independent of wavelength and allows for a complex conjugate suppression of 40?dB for an optical bandwidth of 115?nm. Furthermore, this paper investigates the versatility of the geometric phase to perform polarization sensitive measurements. The Jones vector of the sample was obtained numerically, allowing sample birefringence and optical axis calculation.     

3-D surface profilometry using simultaneous phase-shifting interferometry

Urgent needs for high-speed, non-contact and on-line measurement with high accuracy and repeatability are of great interest for automatic optical inspection (AOI) industries. Therefore, optical phase-shifting interferometry for precision 3-D surface profilometry has become an important metrological method due to its non-contact and high measurement accuracy. Traditional phase-shifting interferometry is very sensitive to vibrations because image acquisition in various phase-shifting sequences could easily introduce measurement errors from environmental influences, such as air disturbance and system structure vibrations. In this paper, we introduce a new simultaneous phase-shifting interferometer for 3-D surface profilometry which employs a single glass plate to generate simultaneous phase-shifted interferograms. Phase reconstruction is performed by using a developed phase-shifting algorithm which uses a three-step phase-shifting method with phase differences of 90°, 180°, and 270° for three interferograms. To verify measurement accuracy and repeatability, the system was employed to measure surface profiles of surface of a flat mirror and set of Mitutoyo gauge blocks. The experiment result shows that the method is proven to be capable of performing one-shot interferometric measurement and minimizing influences from environmental disturbances with measurement repeatability down to 10 nm or less.     

Experimental realization of decoherence-free subspace in neutron interferometry

A decoherence-free subspace (DFS) is an important class of quantum-error-correcting (QEC) codes that have been proposed for fault-tolerant quantum computation. The applications of QEC techniques, however, are not limited to quantum-information processing (QIP). Here we demonstrate how QEC codes may be used to improve experimental designs of quantum devices to achieve noise suppression. In particular, neutron interferometry is used as a test bed to show the potential for adding quantum error correction to quantum measurements. We built a five-blade neutron interferometer that incorporates both a standard Mach-Zender configuration and a configuration based on a DFS. Experiments verify that the DFS interferometer is protected against low-frequency mechanical vibrations. We anticipate these improvements will increase the range of applications for matter-wave interferometry.     

Scheme for entangling atom-photon pairs via an input light in superposition state

We propose a feasible scheme to create macroscopically entangled atom-photon pairs by preparing an input optical superposition state. Several interesting non-classical quantum statistical effects like the atomic squeezed effects are clearly demonstrated. The making and manipulation of entangled atom-photon pairs are useful for, e.g., high-precision interferometry and quantum information science.