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Updated: Mar 21, 2026

Implementation of a Reference Interferometer for Nanodetection
Published on: April 26, 2014
Development of a heterodyne speckle imager to measure 3 degrees of vibrational freedom
Abstract:
A laboratory system has demonstrated the measurement of three degrees of vibrational freedom simultaneously through heterodyne speckle imaging. The random interference pattern generated by the illumination of a rough surface with coherent light can be exploited to extract information about the surface motion. The optical speckle pattern is heterodyne mixed with a coherent reference. The recorded optical data is then processed to extract three dimensions of surface motion. Axial velocity is measured by demodulating the received time-varying intensity of high amplitude pixels. Tilt, a gradient of surface displacement, is calculated by measuring speckle translation following extraction of the speckle pattern from the mixed signal. This paper discusses the laboratory sensor concept, signal processing, and experimental results compared with numeric simulations.
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