Displacement measurement using a laser feedback grating interferometer

A novel laser feedback grating interferometer (LFGI) with a phase-generated carrier demodulation technique is proposed in this paper. Laser feedback grating interference occurs when light emitted from a laser is diffracted by the double-diffraction system and re-enters the laser active cavity, thus generating a modulation of the lasing field. In order to improve the displacement measurement resolution, phase modulation is introduced by an electro-optic modulator in the external cavity of the LFGI. Detection of the displacement can be easily achieved by the time-domain orthogonal demodulation, which does not involve any complicated calculation and is insensitive to the sampling error. Experimental results show that the proposed system has a general nanometer-level resolution. It provides a potential displacement sensor with high resolution, simple mechanical structure, and good reliability.