Misalignment Decoupling and Tilt-to-Length Suppression in a Micro-Actuated Beam Steering Mechanism via Nonlinear...

Tilt-to-length (TTL) coupling is a critical noise source in high-precision interferometric measurements, particularly in systems involving angular actuation and beam steering. This paper proposes a nonlinear cyclic modulation method to identify lateral misalignment and suppress the associated TTL coupling. By applying controlled sinusoidal angular excitation and evaluating the complex modulus ratio between the optical path difference (OPD) and the beam angle at the modulation frequency, the TTL noise induced by the point-ahead angle mechanism (PAAM) is separated and quantified in the frequency domain. Experimental results demonstrate that lateral offset correction reduces TTL noise by 94%, corresponding to a suppression factor of 15.5 and enabling pointing control better than 21 µm/rad. Meanwhile, the parasitic displacement noise of the PAAM is reduced from 10 pm/Hz^1/2 to below 4 pm/Hz^1/2. These results validate the effectiveness of the proposed modulation-based identification framework and demonstrate its applicability to precision interferometric systems.