High-speed and high-sensitivity displacement measurement with phase-locked low-coherence interferometry

A novel high-speed and high-sensitivity displacement measurement sensing system, based on the phase-locked low-coherence interferometry, is presented. The sensing system is realized by comprising the Michelson fiber-optic interferometer. In order to obtain quadrature signals at the interferometer outputs, a 3 x 3 fused silica fiber-optic directional coupler is used. Therefore, the usage of the interferometer phase modulation as well as the usage of the lock-in amplification has been avoided. In this way, the speed of such a realized sensing system is significantly increased in comparison with the standard phase-locked interferometric systems that can be found elsewhere in the literature. The bandwidth of the realized sensing system is limited by the first resonance frequency of the used piezo actuator to 4.6 kHz. The estimated noise floor in the displacement measurement is approximately 180 pm/root Hz. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America