Monostatic coaxial 1.5 μm laser Doppler velocimeter using a scanning Fabry-Perot interferometer

We present a laser Doppler velocimeter (LDV) in monostatic coaxial arrangement consisting of off-the-shelf telecom-grade components: a single frequency laser (wavelength λ = 1.5 μm) and a high-finesse scanning Fabry-Perot interferometer (sFPI). In contrast to previous 1.5 μm LDV systems based on heterodyne detection, our sFPI-LDV has the advantages of having large remote sensing range not limited by laser coherence, high velocity dynamic range not limited by detector bandwidth and inherent sign discrimination of Doppler shift. The more optically efficient coaxial arrangement where transmitter and receiver optics share a common axis reduces the number of components and greatly simplifies the optical alignment. However, the sensitivity to unwanted backreflections is increased. To circumvent this problem, we employ a custom optical circulator design which compared to commercial fiber-optic circulator achieves ~40 dB reduction in strength of unwanted reflections (i.e. leakage) while maintaining high optical efficiency. Experiments with a solid target demonstrate the performance of the sFPI-LDV system with high sensitivity down to pW level at present update rates up to 10 Hz.