Spatially separated heterodyne grating interferometer for eliminating periodic nonlinear errors

Periodic nonlinear errors caused by frequency mixing are serious obstacles for increasing the resolution of heterodyne grating interferometers. To eliminate the periodic nonlinear errors, a spatially separated heterodyne grating interferometer is proposed in this study. Two modulated beams with different frequencies are transferred respectively by two fibers, which form a spatially separated construction. A couple of comparison experiments in both time domain and frequency domain are designed and conducted. The results of the frequency-spectrum analysis experiment showed that the periodic nonlinear errors were no larger than 0.086 nm, which proved that the proposed system was effectual in eliminating periodic nonlinear errors.