In a Ramsey atom interferometer excited by two electromagnetic fields, if atoms are under a time-varying scalar potential during the interrogation time, the phase of the Ramsey fringes shifts owing to the scalar Aharonov–Bohm effect. The phase shift was precisely examined using a Ramsey atom interferometer with a two-photon Raman transition under the second-order Zeeman potential, and a formula...

A perturbation approach is used to study the quantum noise of optical solitons in an asymmetric fiber Sagnac interferometer (a highly transmissive nonlinear optical loop mirror). Analytical expressions for the three second-order quadrature correlators are derived and used to predict the amount of detectable amplitude squeezing along with the optimum power-splitting ratio of the Sagnac interfero...

We demonstrate a new type of spatial phase-shifting, dynamic interferometer that can acquire phase-shifted interferograms in a single camera frame. The interferometer is constructed with a pixelated phase-mask aligned to a detector array. The phase-mask encodes a high-frequency spatial interference pattern on two collinear and orthogonally polarized reference and test beams. The phase-differenc...

Operation of a polarization interferometer for measurement of the wavelength changes of a tunable semiconductor laser was investigated. A λ/8 waveplate made from liquid crystalline polymer is placed in one of interferometers' arms in order to generate two output signals in quadrature. Wavelength was measured with resolution of 2 pm in the wavelength range 628-635 nm. Drift of the interferometer...

We experimentally demonstrate that the spectral sensitivity of a Mach-Zehnder (MZ) interferometer can be enhanced through structural slow light. We observe a 20-fold resolution enhancement by placing a dispersion-engineered, slow-light, photonic-crystal waveguide in one arm of a fiber-based MZ interferometer. The spectral sensitivity of the interferometer increases roughly linearly with the gro...

A Michelson-type spectral interferometer that uses a common beam path for the reference and the sample arms is described. This optical arrangement is more compact and stable than the more commonly used dual-arm interferometer and is well suited for frequency-domain optical coherence tomography of biological samples. With a 16-bit CCD camera, the instrument has sufficient dynamic range and resol...

Quantum-optical coherence tomography (QOCT) combines the principles of classical OCT with the correlation properties of entangled photon pairs [Phys. Rev. A 65, 053817 (2002)]. The standard QOCT configuration is based on the Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer, which uses entangled photons propagating in separate interferometer arms. This noncollinear configuration imposes practical limitations, e.g....

The Millimeter-wave Bolometric Interferometer (MBI) is a prototype instrument developed in part as a pathfinder for a future space-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization measurement, the Einstein Polarization Interferometer for Cosmology (EPIC). MBI uses adding interferometry to measure CMB polarization; this is a distinctly different and possibly more advantageous approach than d...

We realized what we believe is a new phase-shifting scatterplate interferometer by exploiting the polarization characteristics of a birefringent scatterplate. The common-path design of the interferometer reduces its sensitivity to environmental effects, and phase shifting allows quick and accurate quantitative measurements of the test surface. A major feature of the birefringent scatterplate ap...

We have measured the power spectrum of the intensity Auctuations of light transmitted by a Fabry-Perot interferometer when the input field is the real Gaussian field. The real Gaussian field is a field characterized by real, random (Gaussian) amplitude Auctuations. The bandwidth of the real Gaussian field was varied, taking on values less than that of the interferometer, as well as greater. Com...