Optical heterodyne grating shearing interferometry for long-range positioning applications

We develop a displacement measurement and positioning system with nanometer resolution over the millimeter traveling range. The method is based on a heterodyne grating shearing interferometry, a homemade lock-in amplifier and a servo control loop for displacement sensing and positioning. The quasi-common optical path configuration of our system provides better immunity against environmental disturbances. The experimental results demonstrate that our system can measure small and long displacement with nanometric resolution. The device achieves a positioning resolution of 2.3 nm over a traveling range of 20 mm.