Microchip Nd:YAG dual-frequency laser interferometer for displacement measurement.

Abstract

The dual-frequency laser interferometer is an indispensable instrument to measure length, position, deformation and other parameters with high precision and long measurement distance in the advanced manufacturing industry and scientific research. In general, the light source of interferometer is the dual-frequency He-Ne laser. The disadvantages of He-Ne laser include generally large size, more heat radiation to the environment, and limited service life, which limits its application. In this paper, we study a microchip Nd:YAG dual-frequency laser interferometer with a 17.4 MHz frequency difference, which is formed by the stress-induced birefringence in the microchip itself. The down-conversion mixer is designed to decrease the beat frequency to about 5 MHz in heterodyne signal preprocessing modular to meet the bandwidth of phase meter. The experimental results show that the microchip Nd:YAG dual-frequency laser interferometer has a displacement resolution of 10 nm and a measuring range of 500 mm. Due to the advantages of the microchip dual-frequency laser, such as small size (40×40×35 mm), good portability, less power consumption and almost infinite service life, the microchip Nd:YAG dual-frequency laser interferometer has broad application prospects.