Novel phase measurement technique of the heterodyne laser interferometer

This article describes a novel phase measurement technique to increase the measurement velocity compared to the previous arc-tangent method in the heterodyne laser interferometer. The proposed method can reduce the calculation load because the pulse width modulation signal has a linear relation between the phase difference, while the nonlinear function such as arc tangent is required to demodulate the sinusoidal interferent signal. The brief analysis and measurement scheme of the system, and the experimental result using a Zeeman-stabilized He-Ne laser are presented. They demonstrate that the proposed phase measurement technique is proven to be three times faster and more robust than previous arc-tangent method. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.