Balancing a retroreflector to minimize rotation errors using a pendulum and quadrature interferometer

A corner-cube retroreflector has the property that the optical path length for a reflected laser beam is insensitive to rotations about a mathematical point called its optical center (OC). This property is exploited in ballistic absolute gravity meters in which a proof mass containing a corner-cube retroreflector is dropped in a vacuum, and its position is accurately determined with a laser interferometer. In order to avoid vertical position errors when the proof mass rotates during free fall, it is important to collocate its center of mass (COM) with the OC of the retroreflector. This is commonly done using a mechanical scale-based balancing procedure, which has limited accuracy due to the difficulty in finding the exact position of the COM and the OC. This paper describes a novel way to achieve the collocation by incorporating the proof mass into a pendulum and using a quadrature interferometer to interrogate its apparent translation in its twist mode. The mismatch between the COM and OC generates a signal in a quiet part of the spectrum where no mechanical resonance exists. This allows us to tune the position of the COM relative to the OC to an accuracy of about 1 μm in all three axes. This provides a way to directly demonstrate that a rotation of the proof mass by several degrees causes an apparent translation in the direction of the laser beam of less than 1 nm. This technique allows an order of magnitude improvement over traditional methods of balancing.