Xingwu Long

CCD-area-based autocollimator for precision small-angle measurement

An optical method for precision small-angle measurement based on CCD-area-based autocollimator is proposed in this article. The autocollimator utilizes CCD area—an interline CCD image sensor in a video camera as its detector. A collimated image is taken by the video camera and captured into the memory of a personal computer by an image board with high performance, then the image is transformed into a digital image and can be further processed by software with special arithmetic. A small angular displacement is magnified twice by the collimator objective with a long focal length and the camera lens of the video camera. By using a cold-light source and special data processing arithmetic, the measuring resolution of the autocollimator has been greatly improved. The method is proved to be reliable by a prototype experiment. Although some inexpensive materials were used in the experiment, two-axis angular displacement can be measured simultaneously and a measuring accuracy of 0.01 arcsec has been achieved. If ...

Temperature-controlled autocollimator with ultrahigh angular measuring precision

A temperature-controlled autocollimator with ultrahigh angular measuring precision is proposed in this article, which is different from our previous publication [J. Yuan and X. W. Long, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 74, 1362 (2003)]. The autocollimator consists of a zoom lens illuminating a charge-coupled device (CCD). This design provides a compact size and increased stability without compromising precision. Moreover, this design makes it possible to detect a target mirror with either plane reflectors or spherical reflectors. Devices for shock absorption and heat insulation were implemented to diminish external interferences. A special temperature-control system for the autocollimator is designed to control the temperature of the autocollimator. The temperature of the autocollimator fluctuates less than ±0.01°C. The CCD camera’s noise is a fatal obstacle that prevents us from achieving an ultrahigh angular measuring precision. In this article, the influence of the CCD camera’s noise on the measuring resolution is a...

Measurement of phase retardation of waveplate online based on laser feedback.

Polarization flipping accompanying with intensity transfer between two eigenstates of one laser mode happens when waveplate is placed in external cavity. The position of polarization flipping of two eigenstates is a function of phase retardation of waveplate. Phase retardation of waveplate is measured through analyzing the position of polarization flipping of two eigenstates. The measurement accuracy of phase retardation is 0.22°. A new structure of optical cement tray which can eliminate stress birefringence from optical cement process is invented. The accuracy of waveplate manufacture can be improved greatly based on the work of this article.

Internal stress measurement by laser feedback method.

Internal stress in material detracts from its usefulness. In this Letter, a stress measurement instrument is reported. The instrument principle is based on a laser feedback effect where the polarization state of the laser with an anisotropic feedback cavity will flip between two orthogonal directions, while the feedback mirror is tuned by piezoelectric transducer sawtooth voltage. The position of polarization flipping in one period on curves reflects the birefringence or material internal stress of the feedback cavity. Hence, when a piece of internal stress material is placed in a feedback cavity, its internal stress can be measured by the polarization flipping position. The internal stress of the vacuum tube, Nd:YAG crystal, and GaN semiconductor are measured, which proved this instrument has very high precision.

Locking phenomenon of polarization flipping in He–Ne laser with a phase anisotropy feedback cavity

In this article, the locking phenomenon of polarization flipping is reported. A model that integrates the model of the equivalent cavity of a Fabry-Perot interferometer and Lambs semiclassical theory is built to explain the locking phenomenon. On the basis of analysis of the model, a method is proposed to release the locking of polarization flipping. After solving the problem of lock-in, the system in this paper can be used to measure small stress of the optical component and phase retardation of the birefringence component.

Method for eliminating mismatching error in monolithic triaxial ring resonators

Several results on optical-axis perturbation and elimination of the mismatching error C of a monolithic triaxial ring resonator (MTRR) are reported. Based on the augmented 5?5 ray matrix method, by simultaneously considering axial displacement of a mirror and the misalignments in three planar square ring resonators of a MTRR, the rules of optical-axis perturbation are obtained. The mismatching error C of the MTRR is eliminated. The results obtained are important for cavity design, as well as in the improvement and alignment of MTRR.

Nanosecond square high voltage pulse generator for electro-optic switch.

A scalable square high voltage pulse generator, which has the properties of fast rise time, fast fall time, powerful driving capability, and long lifetime, is presented in this paper by utilizing solid state circuitry. A totem-pole topology is designed to supply a powerful driving capability for the electro-optic (EO) crystal which is of capacitive load. Power MOSFETs are configured in series to sustain high voltage, and proper driving circuits are introduced for the specific MOSFETs configurations. A 3000 V pulse generator with ~49.04 ns rise time and ~10.40 ns fall time of the output waveform is presented. This kind of generator is desirable for electro-optic switch. However, it is not specific to EO switch and may have broad applications where high voltage fast switching is required.

Multiple-Point Temperature Gradient Algorithm for Ring Laser Gyroscope Bias Compensation

To further improve ring laser gyroscope (RLG) bias stability, a multiple-point temperature gradient algorithm is proposed for RLG bias compensation in this paper. Based on the multiple-point temperature measurement system, a complete thermo-image of the RLG block is developed. Combined with the multiple-point temperature gradients between different points of the RLG block, the particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to tune the support vector machine (SVM) parameters, and an optimized design for selecting the thermometer locations is also discussed. The experimental results validate the superiority of the introduced method and enhance the precision and generalizability in the RLG bias compensation model.

Novel temperature modeling and compensation method for bias of ring laser gyroscope based on least-squares support vector machine

Bias of ring-laser-gyroscope (RLG) changes with temperature in a nonlinear way. This is an important restraining factor for improving the accuracy of RLG. Considering the limitations of least-squares regression and neural network, we propose a new method of temperature compensation of RLG bias-building function regression model using least-squares support vector machine (LS-SVM). Static and dynamic temperature experiments of RLG bias are carried out to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Moreover, the traditional least-squares regression method is compared with the LS-SVM-based method. The results show the maximum error of RLG bias drops by almost two orders of magnitude after static temperature compensation, while bias stability of RLG improves by one order of magnitude after dynamic temperature compensation. Thus, the proposed method reduces the influence of temperature variation on the bias of the RLG effectively and improves the accuracy of the gyro scope considerably.

Precise force measurement method by a Y-shaped cavity dual-frequency laser

A novel precise force measurement based on a Y-shaped cavity dual-frequency laser is proposed. The principle of force measurement with this method is analyzed, and the analytic relation expression between the input force and the change in the output beat frequency is derived. Experiments using a 632.8-nm Y-shaped cavity He-Ne dual-frequency laser are then performed; they demonstrate that the force measurement is proportional to a high degree over almost five decades of input signal range. The maximum scale factor is observed as 5.02 \times 10^9 Hz/N, with beat frequency instability equivalent resolution of 10^{-5} N. By optimizing the optical and geometrical parameters of the laser sensor, a force measurement resolution of 10^{-6} N could be expected.