pISSN 0374-4914 eISSN 2289-0041

Research Paper

New Phys.: Sae Mulli 2020; 70: 503-509

Published online May 29, 2020 https://doi.org/10.3938/NPSM.70.503

Construction of a Michelson-Type Wavemeter and Evaluation of Its Performances

Hyeon Gi CHOI*, Tae Dong LEE

Department of Optical Engineering, Kumoh National Institute of Technology, Gumi 39253, Korea

Correspondence to:20186077@kumoh.ac.kr

Received: December 9, 2019; Revised: March 4, 2020; Accepted: March 28, 2020

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

We built a Michelson interferometer-based laser wavemeter that used the ratio of the numbers of restrictive interference fringes formed by the reference and the test laser to evaluate its performances. A counter system interface was constructed with LabView and utilized to count the numbers of fringes and to calculate the test lasers wavelength in real time. The measured wavelength was corrected using the modified Edlén's formula. The frequency stability of the reference laser was shown to be essential for accurate results, and the optimum values for the air inflow rate and the reflectors moving speed were found experimentally by observing the measurement errors related to them. The performances of the wavemeter were evaluated through measurements of the wavelength of a He-Ne laser and two semiconductor lasers. The actual measurement uncertainty was less than $\pm$1 pm and the estimated accuracy limit was $\Delta\lambda/\lambda = 1.08 \times 10^{-6}$.

Keywords: Interference, Michelson interferometer, Wavemeter