Journal of Physics E: Scientific Instruments

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P A A’icati and Ph Robert J . Phys. E: Sci. Instrum. 21 (1988) 796-798. Printed in the U K

Ulrich R 1977 Representation of codirectional coupled

waves
Opt. Lett. 1 109-11
Ulrich R and Johnson M 1979 Fibre-ring interferometer:
polarization analysis
Opt. Lett. 4 152-4 A Fizeau wavemeter with
Ulrich R and Simon A 1979 Polarization optics of twisted
single-mode fibers
single-mode optical fibre
Appl. Opt. 18 2241-51 coupling
Unger H G 1977 Planar Optical Waveguides and Fibres
(Oxford Engineering Science Series) W Kedzierski, R W Berends, J B Atkinson and L Krause
Yariv A and Yeh P 1984 Optical W a v e in Crystals (New Department of Physics. University of Windsor, Windsor.
York: Wiley-Interscience) Ontario N9B 3P4. Canada

Received 25 January 1988

Abstract. An improved Fizeau wavemeter for cw and

pulsed laser wavelength measurements was developed,
incorporating single-mode optical fibre coupling. The whole
optical system is enclosed in an evacuated chamber and the
optical fibre acts as a spatial filter. resulting in an improved
performance and increased simplicity of alignment and
operation. Wavelength measurements have been performed
with an accuracy better than 1 part in l o 6 for c w lasers and
2 parts in lo6for pulsed lasers.

1. Introduction
The Fizeau wavemeter is one of the most promising devices
for measuring the wavelength of both c w and pulsed dye
lasers with an accuracy comparable to the linewidth produced
by most pulsed lasers. Most wavemeters for use with pulsed
lasers use a spatial filter with a metallic pinhole, which is
susceptible to damage caused by the high power density.
Diamond pinholes. which can withstand high powers. have
inherent drawbacks due to the translucence of the material
and to the limited range of available pinhole sizes (which are
rather large). The present design utilises a single-mode
optical fibre coupling which overcomes these difficulties as
well as the problem of input-beam alignment. The fibre
coupling is more convenient and easier to use than the spatial
pinhole as the input fibre can easily be aligned with the input
laser beam whereas the fixed pinhole design requires the laser
beam to be aligned with the wavemeter.

2. Principle of operation
The laser light entering the wavemeter is spatially filtered by a
single-mode fibre which creates a beam with a spherical
wavefront. This is made incident on an off-axis parabolic
mirror which produces a wide and well defined parallel beam
having a gaussian intensity profile. and directs it onto a wedge
consisting of two fused silica interferometer plates. After
refection from the wedge, the beam now consists of two
coherent parts almost parallel to each other, which produce a
Fizeau interference pattern; the fringes are registered by a
photodiode array interfaced to a computer. The wavelength
of the incident laser light is determined from the spacing and
phase of the fringe pattern. The approximate value of the
wavelength ,Iis (,obtained from the expression (Morris ef a1
1984)
I,,, = zpa (1)
where p is the fringe spacing and a is the wedge angle. The
optical path difference (OPD) A d , corresponding to a fringe
minimum chosen for reference, is calculated from the wedge
spacing and the wedge angle. and yields the interference

796 0022-3735/88/080796+ 03 $02.50 @ 1988 IOP Publishing Ltd

Fizeau wavemeter with optical fibre coupling
order :V of this fringe (Lu and Wu 1984):
where N is rounded off to the nearest integer. The final value
of the wavelength 2 can then be determined with an accuracy
limited by the error in the measurement of the wedge spacing:
3. Construction details
The optical layout of the wavemeter, which is shown in figure
1, is similar to that proposed by Morris et a1 (1984). All
optical components, except the precision fibre coupler. are
mounted on a 40 mm thick aluminium plate placed inside an
aluminium vacuum chamber maintained at 2 Pa. Laser light is
spatially filtered by focusing it onto the 4 p m core of the F-SV
Newport single-mode fibre and is formed into a parallel beam
by reflection from the surface of a 200" focal length 21"
off-axis parabolic mirror. The parallel beam is reflected from
the two inner uncoated Fizeau wedge surfaces and the result-
ing interfering components are focused by a cylindrical lens of
50 mm focal length onto a 25 mm long photodiode array of
1024 elements (Reticon RL1024H) placed at the zero-shear
position (Snyder 1981).
dF
Figure 1. Optical layout of the Fizeau wavemeter. A . microscope
objective; B. optical fibre; C, off-axis paraboloid: D. Fizeau
interferometer; E. cylindrical lens; F , photodiode array. The
arrows a indicate the uncoated surfaces. The air-gap spacing was
1 mm and the wedge angle was 5.5364 X lo-' rad.
The Fizeau wedge was manufactured (by Interoptics Ltd
of Ottawa, Canada) of optically contacted quartz compo-
nents. The wedge plates were flat to d120, inclined at an angle
of 5 . 5 3 6 4 ~ rad, and separated by a quartz wedge ring
with a spacing of 1 mm. The outer surfaces of the plates were
antireflection coated for visible light while the active inner
plate surfaces were uncoated. W e decided to use uncoated
wedge surfaces in order to avoid fringe shift and asymmetry
(Rogers 1982) and to eliminate the spectral dependence of
the finesse due to the coating bandpass characteristics.
The temperature of the aluminium plate was controlled at
30510.5 K and the vacuum chamber was maintained at
301k0.5 K . Without the temperature control we observed a
very small systematic wavelength drift of one part in 10' per
degree temperature change of the aluminium plate. The
electronic data acquisition system is shown schematically in
figure 2 . The optical signal registered by the Reticon
RL1021H monolithic self-scanning linear photodiode array is
converted into a series of electric pulses, which are sampled
and held by a sample-and-hold amplifier. and are then digi-
tised with 0.8,us conversion speed by an %bit A D C , loaded
into 1 k memory buffer and finally transferred to an IBM XT
computer. The fringe data processing and wavelength calcula-
tion are performed using the algorithm of Snyder (1980) in a
Turbo Pascal program at a rate of about 1 Hz. The power
requirement is about 0.01 mW for a TEM,),,c w laser source and
about 2,uJ energy per pulse for a pulsed laser source.
At these energies one can expect the generation of
Stokes-shifted wavelengths in the fibre, which can lead to
unexpectedly large errors in the calculated wavelengths. In
order to estimate and minimise these errors we reduced the
power entering the fibre optic cable by a factor of about 50
and allowed the photodiode array to accumulate and in-
tegrate the signal of 50 pulses before each scan of the
array. This procedure gives an average wavelength of 50 laser
pulses but with a negligibly small contribution from Stokes-
shifted wavelengths created at higher power densities.
Figure 2. Schematic diagram of the electronic data acquisition
system. A . laser; B. electronics for synchronisation and timing; C,
8-bit ADC: D, memory buffer; E. microcomputer: F. oscilloscope;
G. photodiode array.
4. Calibration and performance
The accuracy of the wavemeter depends strongly on the
precision of its calibration. The calibration procedure,
especially a method for calculating the Fizeau wedge spacing,
was described by Lu and Wu (1981). For a preliminary
calibration we used several Ar' laser lines and the 632.8 nm
He-Ne laser line. In addition. we used approximately 50
wavelengths in the range 575-620nm from a Coherent
Auto-scan ring laser equipped with its own internal wave-
meter. The calculation of the wavelength included a correc-
tion for dispersion by the quartz plates (Morris et al 1984).
The Auto-scan wavemeter, which was dedicated to the ring
laser and restricted to c w operation, was checked against two
calibration lines of the 1: absorption spectrum. Its accuracy
was better by about a factor of five than that of our wave-
meter, which we found to be capable of wavelength measure-
ment with an absolute accuracy of one part in 10"for cw input
and, for pulsed laser input, better than two parts in lo6; the
short-term precision was better than two parts in 10'. The
accuracy of this instrument is limited mainly by systematic
offsets due to the limited resolution of the %bit ADC and, to a
lesser extent, by statistical scatter.
Acknowledgment
This research was supported by a grant from the Natural
Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
797
\I/ Kedzierski er a1 J. Phys. E: Sci. Instrum. 21 (1988) 798-804. Printed in the UK

References
Lu D and W u Z 1984 A method for calculating the wedge
spacing of a Fizeau wavelength meter
Opt. Laser Technol. 16 206
Morris M B, McIlrath T J and Snyder J J 1984 Fizeau
wavemeter for pulsed laser wavelength measurement
Appl. Opt. 23 3862
A new class of multiple
Rogers J R 1982 Fringe shifts in multiple-beam Fizeau dispersion grating
interferometry
J . Opt. Soc. Am. 72 638
spectrometers
Snyder J J 1980 Algorithm for fast digital analysis of V Mazzacuratii, P Benassit and G RuoccoS
interference fringes t Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita’ degli studi ‘La
Appl. Opt. 19 1223 Sapienza’, Piazzale A Moro 2, 00185 Roma, Italy
Snyder J .J 1981 Fizeau wavemeter $ Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita’ di L’Aquila, Piazza
Proc. Soc. Photo-Opt. Instrum. Eng. 288 258 Annunziata 1, 68100 L’Aquila, Italy

Received 27 August 1987, in final form 1.5 December 1987

Abstract. The characteristics of a new double-pass double-

monochromator spectrometer (DMDP2000) especially
designed for low-frequency light-scattering studies are
reported. Preliminary spectra are presented to show the
high resolving power achieved with a free spectral range of
2000 cm-’, as well as the high luminosity, contrast and
stability. Spectra obtained with a single-pass Fabry-Perot
interferometer are also shown for comparison.

1. Introduction
Inelastic light-scattering experiments requiring a resolution
better than a tenth of the wavenumber are generally per-
formed using Fabry-Perot (FP) interferometers or, in a few
cases, by instruments based on the coherent anti-Stokes
resonant scattering technique (CARS) (Lauebereau and Kaiser
1978). In current literature Brillouin spectroscopy has been
usually performed with single- or multi-pass FP interfer-
ometers, the main limit of which is represented by the low
ratio between the free spectral range (FSR) and the resolution
(6). Indeed the typical finesse ( F = F s R / value
~) ranges
between 80 and 100.
In particular, when we are interested in determining low-
frequency spectral shapes, a limited finesse can be a severe
shortcoming because of the superposition of adjacent spectral
orders. To avoid this problem the FSR needs to be increased,
thereby losing resolution or. alternatively, long and unreli-
able extrapolation procedures may be adopted (Mazzacurati
and Benassi 1987). Furthermore, a particularly serious
problem arises in analysing weak and smooth quasi-elastic
spectra, when high-intensity sharp lines as a Brillouin doublet
or an intense spurious elastic component are also present in
the spectrum. In this case the high contrast required is
achieved in Fabry-Perot interferometers using multi-pass
operation. This generally implies a loss of stability and lumi-
nosity, while the difficulties due to the low finesse are still
present, actually implying a limitation to the analysis of low-
frequency polarised and depolarised spectra in dense gases,
liquids, viscoelastic materials, anharmonic crystals and disor-
dered systems.
In this paper we present the first experimental results
obtained with a new grating multiple spectrometer which has
been designed and realised. in collaboration with the techni-
cal staff of the SOPRA company?, in order to simultaneously
fulfil the following requirements.

(’SOPRA: SocietC de Production et de Recherches Appliqubes, 68

rue Pierre Joigneaux. 92270 Bois-Colombes. France.

798 0022-3735/88/080798+07 $02.50 @ 1988 IOP Publishing Ltd