In-Line Acousto-Optic Architectures for Holographic Interferometry and Sensing

Abstract

Novel two Bragg cell and one Bragg cell acousto-optic (AO) interferometers are introduced in this paper. These interferometers can be used as a variety of optical instruments such as holographic interferometers, interferometric sensors, material characterization tools, and diagnostic measurement systems such as turbulence and flow/temperature assessment. To this date, to the best of the author’s knowledge, no such optical systems have been proposed for interferometric sensing and measurement tools that offer high optical power (e.g., 1 W CW), high speed scanning (e.g., < 50 μs per scan spot) interferometer systems with both heterodyning and almost baseband options for accurate diagnostic measurements. The bulk optics nature of our optical system design allows for high optical power interferometric applications.