Polarization compensation: a passive approach to a reducing heterodyne interferometer nonlinearity.
Cyclic errors that are due to optical leakage limit the precision of displacement measurements made with optical interferometers. A method for real-time estimation of leakage components is introduced and is used to implement a novel passive technique for suppression of cyclic nonlinearities that uses only adjustments of existing polarizers and quarter-wave plates. This approach is used to reduce the cyclic error from 3 nm to 300 pm for an interferometer operating at a wavelength of 1320 nm.
Lay
Oliver P
OP
Dubovitsky
Serge
S