All-reflective Michelson, Sagnac, and Fabry-Perot interferometers based on grating beam splitters

All-reflective Michelson, Sagnac, and Fabry-Perot interferometers based on grating beam splitters are experimentally demonstrated at a wavelength of 1064 nm. A 1200-groove/mm grating diffracting 0 and -1 orders with an efficiency of 48.2% for each order was used as a near-50/50 beam splitter. The all-reflective Sagnac and Michelson interferometers were formed by reintroducing both of the diffracted beams back to the grating. The Fabry-Perot interferometer was formed in a Littrow configuration by using a 1700-groove/mm grating with a blazing efficiency of 91% as a cavity coupler. These interferometers encompass all the fundamental configurations of all-reflective laser interferometric gravitational-wave detectors, promising improved wavefront quality by avoiding volume thermal effects in transmissive optics under high-power laser illumination. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America.