Experimental demonstration of reduced tilt-to-length coupling by a two-lens imaging system

The coupling between beam tilt and longitudinal path length readout in a setup representing a LISA test mass interferometer was reduced to below 2 µm/rad using a two lens imaging system. This was achieved by the use of a homodyne equal arm-length Mach-Zehnder interferometer and suppression of the dominating effects of higher order Gaussian modes and longitudinal actuator movement. The latter was subtracted using the phase signal of a large single element photo diode.