Quasi-monolithic heterodyne laser interferometer for inertial sensing

Abstract

We present a compact heterodyne laser interferometer developed for high-sensitivity displacement sensing applications. This interferometer consists of customized prisms and waveplates assembled as a quasi-monolithic unit to realize a miniaturized system. The interferometer design adopts a common-mode rejection scheme to provide a high rejection ratio to common environmental noise. Experimental tests in vacuum show a displacement sensitivity level of 11 pm/rtHz at 100mHz, and as low as 0.6pm/rtHz above 1Hz. The prototype unit has a size of 20mm X 20mm X 10mm and weighs 4.5 grams, which allows subsequent integration into compact systems.

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• $2\cdot 10^{-13}$ fractional laser frequency stability with a 7-cm unequal-arm Mach-Zehnder interferometer
• Integrating high-precision and fringe-scale displacement sensing using heterodyne cavity-tracking