High-accuracy absolute distance measurement by two-wavelength double heterodyne interferometry with variable synthetic wavelengths

TL;DR

This paper introduces a high-precision absolute distance measurement method using a two-wavelength heterodyne interferometer with a variable synthetic wavelength, achieving nanometer accuracy over a meter range.

Contribution

It presents a novel interferometer setup with a small wavelength scanning range and fast measurement speed, enabling high-accuracy distance measurements with simple laser sources.

Findings

Measurement range up to 1.5 meters

Accuracy better than 1.2 nanometers

Measurement time of 20 milliseconds

Abstract

We present an absolute distance measurement interferometer based on a two wavelength interferometer and a variable synthetic wavelength technique. The wavelength scanning range was 12 GHz, realized with a phase accuracy of 1.0 m{\lambda} by heterodyne detection at each measurement wavelength. This small wavelength scanning range enabled the use of distributed feedback laser diodes as an interferometer light source and a fast 20 ms wavelength scanning time by injection current control. We demonstrated a measurement range of up to 1.5 m and an accuracy better than 1.2 nm in comparison with a displacement measurement interferometer, corresponding to a relative accuracy of 10-9. In addition, we also proposed expanding the range of maximum measurement and compensation of refractive index of air for linear colliders.