Affiliation:
1. The Metrology and Biomedical Engineering Institute, Warsaw University of Technology, 02-525 Warsaw, Poland
Abstract
The majority of current methods for measuring the angular deflection of a laser beam enable measurement only in one selected plane. However, there are tasks in which measurements of laser beam deflections in 3D are required. In this paper, we present a way of enabling two-axial measurements of the deflection of a beam based on a single-axis sensor. The key idea is to direct a laser beam, alternately, into one of two arms of a measurement system. In the first arm, the beam is transmitted directly to the angular sensor, while in the second, the beam is directed to the sensor via a special optical element that rotates the plane of the beam deflection; in other words, this element changes the deflection in the horizontal plane into a deflection in the vertical plane, and vice versa. To alternate the path of the beam, a variable phase retarder and a polarising beamsplitter are used. The proposed technique was experimentally verified, and the results confirm its effectiveness.
Subject
Electrical and Electronic Engineering,Biochemistry,Instrumentation,Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics,Analytical Chemistry
Reference28 articles.
1. A Detailed Analysis of the Optical Beam Deflection Technique for Use in Atomic Force Microscopy;Putman;J. Appl. Phys.,1992
2. Optical-beam-deflection Atomic Force Microscopy: The NaCl (001) Surface;Meyer;Appl. Phys. Lett.,1990
3. Laser Pointing Stability Measurements;Morin;Third International Workshop on Laser Beam and Optics Characterization,1996
4. High Accuracy Form Measurement of Specularly Reflecting Surfaces by Laser Autocollimation;Virdee;Ultraprecision Machining and Automated Fabrication of Optics,1987
5. Shimizu, Y., Matsukuma, H., and Gao, W. (2020). Optical Angle Sensor Technology Based on the Optical Frequency Comb Laser. Appl. Sci., 10.