Optical scanning extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometer for absolute microdisplacement measurement

We report an optical-scanning, dual-fiber, extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometer system for absolute measurement of microdisplacement. The system involves two air-gapped Fabry-Perot cavities, formed by fiber end faces, functioning as sensing and reference elements. Taking the scanning wavelength as an interconverter to compare the gap length of the sensing head with the reference-cavity length yields the absolute measurement of the sensing-cavity length. The measurement is independent of the wavelength-scanning accuracy, and the reference-cavity length can be self-calibrated simply by one's changing the sensing-head length by an accurate value. (C) 1997 Optical Society of America.