Single beam interferometric angle measurement

Pierdomenico Paolino (1) , Ludovic Bellon (1)

1 Phys-ENS - Laboratoire de Physique de l'ENS Lyon

We present an application of a quadrature phase interferometer to the measurement of the angular position of a parallel laser beam with interferometric precision. In our experimental realization we reach a resolution of 6.8e-10 rad (1.4e-4 arcsec) for 1 kHz bandwidth in a 2e-2 rad (1 deg) range. This alternative to the optical lever technique features absolute calibration, independence of the sensitivity on the thermal drifts, and wide range of measurement at full accuracy.

Keywords: Angle measurement; interferometer; quadrature phase interferometry

Domains: Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Instrumentation and Detectors [physics.ins-det]; Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Optics [physics.optics]

Pierdomenico Paolino, Ludovic Bellon. Single beam interferometric angle measurement. Optics Communications, 2007, 280, pp.1-9. ⟨10.1016/j.optcom.2007.07.060⟩. ⟨ensl-00119346v3⟩