We give a detailed description of a novel method for timeresolved experiments on single non-luminescent nanoparticles. The method is based on the combination of pump-probe spectroscopy and a commonpath interferometer. In our interferometer, probe and reference arms are separated in time and polarization by a birefringent crystal. The interferometer, fully described by an analytical model, allow...

We demonstrate, to our knowledge, the first on-chip heterodyne interferometer fabricated on a 300-mm CMOS compatible process that exhibits root-mean-square (RMS) position noise on the order of 2 nm. Measuring 1 mm by 6 mm, the interferometer is also, to our knowledge, the smallest heterodyne interferometer demonstrated to date and will surely impact numerous interferometric and metrology applic...

The operating characteristics of a novel phase-shifting interferometer are presented. Interference arises by reflecting the light from a sample back into the cavity of a cw He-Ne laser. Changes in phase and fringe visibility are calculated from an overdetermined set of phase-shifted intensity measurements with the phase shifts being introduced with an electro-optic modulator. The interferometer...

We experimentally demonstrate long distance measurements with a femtosecond frequency comb laser using dispersive interferometry. The distance is derived from the unwrapped spectral phase of the dispersed interferometer output and the repetition frequency of the laser. For an interferometer length of 50 m this approach has been compared to an independent phase counting laser interferometer. The...

The Fourier relation between the longitudinal degree of coherence and the radial intensity distribution of a light source can be demonstrated by two configurations of a low spatial-coherence interferometer. We propose a general configuration, which includes the two known types as special cases of the general design. Moreover, by adjusting the distance between the light source and the main lens ...

We study a Mach-Zehnder interferometer fed by a coherent state in one input port and vacuum in the other. We explore a Bayesian phase estimation strategy to demonstrate that it is possible to achieve the standard quantum limit independently from the true value of the phase shift and specific assumptions on the noise of the interferometer. We have been able to implement the protocol by using par...

A 2-element Michelson radio interferometer was installed at Bleien observatory. The main task of the experiment was on the one hand the demonstration of a solar interferometer with low cost components, on the other hand to compare different radio spectrometers as a backend for the interferometer. Furthermore, we tried to optimize the equipment to find the limits of the instrumental setup concer...

A highly accurate two-color interferometer with automatic correction of the refractive index of air was developed for crustal strain observation. The two-color interferometer, which can measure a geometrical distance of approximately 70 m, with a relative resolution of 2 × 10 −9 , clearly detected a change in strain due to earth tides in spite of optical measurement in air. Moreover, a large st...

An advanced displacement measuring interferometer system has been developed to satisfy the needs of semiconductor manufacturing and lithography. The system electronics provides a position resolution of 0.31 nm at velocities up to 2.1 m s−1 when the system is used with a double-pass interferometer. Output data rates up to 107 samples per second are available. The data age, which is the delay fro...