A digital optical phase lock loop (OPLL) is implemented to synchronize the frequency and phase between two external cavity diode lasers (ECDL), generating Raman pulses for atom interferometry. The setup involves alldigital phase detection and a programmable digital proportional-integral-derivative (PID) loop in locking. The lock generates a narrow beat-note linewidth below 1 Hz and low phase-noise of 0.03 rad 2 between the master and slave ECDLs. The lock proves to be stable and robust, and all the locking parameters can be set and optimized on a computer interface with convenience, making the lock adaptable to various setups of laser systems.

A new optical-fiber frequency domain interferometer (OFDI) device for accurate measurement of the absolute distance between two stationary objects, with centimeter measuring range and nanometer resolution, has been developed. Its working principle and on-line data processing method were elaborated. The new OFDI instrument was constructed all with currently available commercial communication products. It adopted the wide-spectrum amplified spontaneous emission light as the light source and optical-fiber tip as the test probe. Since this device consists of only fibers or fiber coupled components, it is very compact, convenient to operate, and easy to carry. By measuring the single-step length of a translation stage and the thickness of standard gauge blocks, its ability in implementing nanometer resolution and centimeter measuring range on-line measurements was validated.

Twiddle factor is considered to be the dominant error source of frequency estimate by Fourier transformation (FT), and thus impacts the accuracy in FT-based heterodyne velocimetry. Here we report a novel data analysis method for heterodyne velocimetry, which utilizes the change law of frequency errors with signals' phases to develop twiddle factor neutralization method, improving the performance of heterodyne velocimetry. Numerical simulations show that this method can improve velocity resolution by many times as compared to the boxcar, Hamming, and Hann window functions under different noise conditions. A 90° optical hybrid is used to generate four phase shifted signals for this method, and 1 m/s level velocity resolution and 100 ps level time resolution are simultaneously achieved in laser-shock experiments.

It is very important to determine the phase boundaries for materials with complex crystalline phase structures to construct their corresponding multi-phase equation of state. By measuring the sound velocity of Sn with different porosities, different shock-induced melting pressures along the solid-liquid phase boundary could be obtained. The incipient shock-induced melting of porous Sn samples with two different porosities occurred at a pressure of about 49.1 GPa for a porosity of 1.01 and 45.6 GPa for a porosity of 1.02, based on measurements of the sound velocity. The incipient shock-induced melting pressure of solid Sn was revised to 58.1 GPa using supplemental measurements of the sound velocity. Trivially, pores in Sn decreased the shock-induced melting pressure. Based on the measured longitudinal sound velocity data, a refined solid phase transition and the Hugoniot temperature-pressure curve's trend are discussed. No bcc phase transition occurs along the Hugoniot for porous Sn; further investigation is required to understand the implications of this finding.

A unique dynamic frequency-domain interferometer for absolute distance measurement has been developed recently. This paper presents the working principle of the new interferometric system, which uses a photonic crystal fiber to transmit the wide-spectrum light beams and a high-speed streak camera or frame camera to record the interference stripes. Preliminary measurements of harmonic vibrations of a speaker, driven by a radio, and the changes in the tip clearance of a rotating gear wheel show that this new type of interferometer has the ability to perform absolute distance measurements both with high time- and distance-resolution.