The numerical aperture (NA) and power of diffraction wave in point-diffraction interferometer (PDI) could significantly limit the measurement range of the system. A fiber point-diffraction interferometer with high NA is proposed for the measurement of absolute three-dimensional coordinates. Based on the single-mode fiber with submicron aperture, the diffraction wave with both high NA and high power is obtained, by which the achievable measurement range of the PDI can be extended. A double-iterative method based on Levenbery-Marquardt algorithm is proposed to determine the three-dimensional coordinates under measurement. Numerical simulation and comparison experiments have been carried out to demonstrate the accuracy and feasibility of the proposed PDI system, with both high measurement precision and nice repeatability achieved.

It is a key issue to measure the point-diffraction wavefront error, which determines the achievable accuracy of point-diffraction interferometer (PDI). A high-precision method based on shearing interferometry is proposed to measure submicron-aperture fiber point-diffraction wavefront with high numerical aperture (NA). To obtain the true shearing point-diffraction wavefront, a double-step calibration method based on three-dimensional coordinate reconstruction and symmetric lateral displacement compensation is proposed to calibrate the geometric aberration in the case of high NA and large lateral wavefront displacement. The calibration can be carried out without any prior knowledge about the system configuration parameters. With the true shearing wavefront, the differential Zernike polynomials fitting method is applied to reconstruct the point-diffraction wavefront. Numerical simulation and experiments have been carried out to demonstrate the accuracy and feasibility of the proposed measurement method, and a good measurement accuracy is achieved.

As a key element in point-diffraction interferometer (PDI), the diffraction pinhole determines the sphericity of the reference wavefront and achievable precision of the testing system. The point-diffraction wavefront error, aperture angle, and light transmittance in the PDI operating at visible light, which are determined by pinhole dimension, are analyzed based on finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. The study shows that an aperture angle about 75° can be obtained with a 1 μm pinhole diameter, and the corresponding testing precision is better than root mean square λ/1000 within 0.35 NA. Both the numerical simulation and experiments have been carried out to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed analysis approach, and a good agreement is obtained between calculated and measured parameters in visible-light PDI. The proposed simulation approach with the FDTD method provides a feasible way to analyze the diffraction wavefront in visible-light PDI, as well as a powerful tool for the design and optimization of PDI system.

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Laser collimation of Cr atomic beam using a transverse Doppler cooling scheme is studied. The frequency of laser is stabilized at 5±0.26MHz below the 7S3→7PO452Cr transition. The shortest size of the laser cooling beam is computed theoretically to be 13.7mm. Accordingly a Cr beam was collimated using a transverse Doppler cooling scheme. We obtained that the transverse distribution of Cr beam is less than 1/3 of the uncooled beam.