Modified white-light Mach-Zehnder interferometer for direct group-delay measurements

A modified white-light Mach-Zehnder interferometer based on a single beam splitter is described for direct group-delay measurements. The arms of the interferometer are folded in such a manner that a single beam splitter can be used to split the incoming beam and combine the outgoing beams. This method offers a twofold advantage: The measuring range of the interferometer is twice as large as that of the Michelson interferometer, and the systematic error that is associated with the beam splitter is minimized because of the configuration. We report the results of measurements on various optical components performed in the 555-630-nm spectral region and propose a scheme for the processing of the experimental data. We present a comparison of the data analyzed by the proposed processing scheme along with the theoretical calculations.