Elimination of the direction ambiguity and the dead zone in spectrally resolved interferometry

Abstract

We propose a very simple and effective technique to eliminate the direction ambiguity and the dead zone, which limit the measurable range in spectrally resolved interferometry (SRI). By using a dispersive material, the nonlinear spectral phase caused by the dispersion can provide useful information and determine the direction of measuring distances. In addition, the dead zone is removed by two complementary measurement results in dichroic SRI. As the results of feasibility experiments, it was confirmed that the nonlinearity of the spectral phase successfully determined the direction of the measuring distances. Moreover, the final linear distances in the whole measurement range without the dead zone was obtained in dichroic SRI with two LEDs.