Interferometer Definition and 178 Threads

I have set up a simple interferometer as follows: a laser is aligned by two mirrors and then passed through a 50/50 beamsplitter. Both arms have mirrors which reflect the beam back through the beam splitter and to a camera, which measures the pattern (concentric circles, as expected). When both...

I am studying Fizeau analysis for wedge problem. I reached to this part and I cant follow. I have two questions and any help will be appreciated 1) what is meant by co-phasal wave fronts? does it mean that they have the same phase? ( how can I Think about the wave fronts in this case) 2) why...

I just watched Sabine's Hossenfelder very recent new video on the Quantum Cheshire effect. From experience, everything Sabine's says on either entanglement/quantum interpretations or not-physics, is heavily biased to her worldview. However I thought it was fun to see what she was going to say...

Good morning all... please I'd like to know what's the smallest ever recorded change in phase or wavelength any multiport interferometer has ever been able to detect. And which multiport interferometer detected it.

I am trying to build a Fabry-Perot interferometer to make some narrow band filters, and I was wondering if anyone can go into the specifics of whether there's anything special about the types of mirrors used in construction. I started by trying to see how hard it really is to make one on my...

Hello, The Mach-Zehnder interferometer makes it possible to highlight the corpuscular and undulatory aspect of light, (in particular using single photons). By using the "continuous" beam from a coherent source, one is able to visualize directly on two screens E1 and E2, an interference pattern...

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v15/162 Looking for a layman's summary of this article. If I spent a couple of hours maybe I could do it. Then again, maybe not.

The recent high angular resolution images of M87's inner black hole taken by radio telescopes around the globe all linked together in a computer to simulate a giant interferometer, suggest that to achieve still better angular resolution we would need to supplement the terrestrial receiving...

In a Michelson interferometer with a monochromatic laser, why do we always see an interference pattern even if we move one of the mirrors? Shouldn't it be a certain distance for which the movable mirror reflects the wave to be in opposite phase with the other wave so that they interfere...

I watched a video on the topic by Sabine Hossenfelder. Now it is said by many that this proves the photon "knows" something in advance because a certain state of a certain beam splitter can be probed in theory without the photon ever encountering that beam splitter because it took another path...

Sorry for the lack of formatting, I'm in a rush to write this before I go pick someone up from work. My question is what is theta1? Is it 45 degrees because that's the angle the light hits the boundary of the plate to the n1 medium? Or is it 0? It seems like it should be 45 but there's an...

Hello everyone, i have a homework but I'm so confused how to solved it , can someone make a solution manual for this homework?, Thankyou.

In two different textbooks, there are two different formulas with different derivation styles for the "No Fringe Formation" Condition. In approach (a), they use an amalgamation of bright and dark for 2 wavelengths having very minute difference in the following manner: 2dcostheta=n*λ(1)...

In every article that I've read about optical interferometers they explain that collimated light from farther the telescope is sent down the delay line, and then into a beam combiner with other beam. Like in the photo below But they all only show light that enters the telescope along the axis...

See attached images.

Hello I am reading some introductory laser cavity stuff and I am a bit confused about the existence of gaussian beams in the Fabry-Perot interferometer. If you solve the stability condition for a cavity (i.e. asking for the q parameter to reproduce itself after one round trip) you get that in...

Fabry-Perot Interferometer contains an etalon(an optical cavity created by 2 partially reflective mirrors placed parallel to each other separated by a small distance). When light enters the etalon it gets reflected back and forth between both the mirrors, being partially reflective, every time...

Hello. I have a question. In the book I am reading, They derive the Ubs operator applied on a photon state with the beam splitter at a ratio of 50/50. A beam splitter that is used in the Mach-Zehnder interferometer. I'm having a hard time deciphering whether the formula for beam splitter...

I'm confused by the phase shifts in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer because I keep finding two different explanations. One explanation (for example, given on Wikipedia, but also elsewhere) states that on each reflection, the phase shift is 180 degrees, but only, if light is reflected from the...

Hello, I am interested in weak measures since I discovered this paper: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1206/1206.6224.pdf I understood that retro-causality is only an interpretation and that's not more exploitable than the famous experiments of quantum gum delayed choice. In fact, we...

For a science fair experiment at high school I built a Michelson interferometer that could achieve a single interference state. Now there are two beams exit from such an interferometer, if a dielectric beamsplitter/combiner is used, one beam exits in a constructive state, and the other in a...

Hello, I have some trouble understanding how to construct the matrix for the beam splitter (in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer). I started with deciding my input and output states for the photon. I then use Borns rule, which I have attached below: To get the following for the state space...

Hi. As far as I understand the Franson interferometer, the photons are in an entangled state like $$\left|\Psi\right\rangle=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(\left|\text{short}\right\rangle\left|\text{short}\right\rangle+\left|\text{long}\right\rangle\left|\text{long}\right\rangle\right)$$ if the setup...

What will change if we place the slips in front of the converging lens instead of behind the collimating lens? My teacher say nothing will change in the interference pattern but I doubt his answer.

Hello, i hope i posted this in the correct forum! When measuring coherence of a HeNe laser using a Michelson interferometer, there are key points along the moving interferometer arm where coherence is highest. The distance between each of these peaks corresponds with the length of the laser...

hi i want to design michelson interferometer device for measuring small distance movement i am using laser diode with a wavelength 635 nm and power 3 mw can anyone tell me how can i decide the dimensions (from source to beam splitter , for beam splitter to fixed mirror , from beam splitter to...

My students and I tried to create a Michelson inerferometer like yours (08557.00). The problem is with a mirror that moves. How did you solve this precise translatory movement? Professor of Physics Nikola Gledić - Technical school Šabac, Serbia Thanks in advantage!

Homework Statement An interferometer is illuminated by light from a sodium lamp, which emits two narrow spectral lines at wavelengths of 589.0nm and 589.6nm, with the intensity of the 589.0nm line being twice that of the 589.6nm line. Show that there are values of d at which the visibility of...

Homework Statement Homework EquationsThe Attempt at a Solution I need help on part b and c. Here is my attempt: Ai=Ai,0 exp(ikz-wt) (1 + √R1√R2 exp(iδ) + [√R1√R2 exp(iδ)]^2 +......) =Ai,0 exp(ikz-wt) / (1- √R1√R2 exp(iδ)) => |Ai| = |Ai,0| |(1 + √R1√R2 exp(iδ))| / ( (1 - √R1√R2 cos(δ))2 +...

A question about the Mach-Zehnder interferometer. My understanding is: If its two arms are equally long, there is destructive interference in one output and constructive interference in the other output. So, the intensity of light detected at the first output should be 0% and at the second...

Hi all, I have a problem trying to interpret the mathematics of this experiment and would like some help. I think it's best I write out all my ideas (and misconceptions) so that I can be corrected. An illustration of the setup is below. Thanks in advance for any assistance! Let the following...

Hello, I am having a hard time understanding a result relating to a michelson interferometer. I always assumed that when the beam hits the wave splitter both resulting waves will have half the amplitude of the original wave. However using this assumption does not give the correct irradiance for...

Experimentalists, would you mind sharing your experience building a fiber-based Mach-Zehnder interferometer? What equipment did you use? How hard is it to achieve the same length of both arms with the fiber and couplers that you can buy online? And how sensitive is the resulting interferometer...

Homework Statement The sodium D-lines are a pair of narrow, closely spaced, approximately equal intensity spectral lines with a mean wavelength of approximately 589 nm. A Michelson interferometer is set up to study the D-lines from a sodium lamp. High contrast fringes are seen for zero...

Homework Statement The Michelson interferometer in the figure below can be used to study properties of light emitted by distant sources A source ##S_1##, when at rest, is known to emit light at wavelength ##632.8~ \rm nm##. In this case, if the movable mirror is translated through a...

Homework Statement Sketch and explain the operation of the Michelson interferometer. How is the transmission of the interferometer modified if the amplitude transmission t and reflectivity r of the partially-reflecting beamsplitter are not equal? What happens to the fraction of light that is...

Hello everybody, Dirac notation uses "bras"( <a| ) and "kets"( |b> ), which are row vectors and column vectors respectively, but what would something like |a, b> mean? It makes no notational sense to me Context: A couple of photons going through beam splitters in an interferometer. One is...

Homework Statement The input signal to the interferometer shown in the picture below is given by: $$E_{\text{in}}=\sqrt{P}\exp\left(j\omega_{0}t+\frac{jD(t)\pi}{2}+j\varphi_{p}(t)\right). \tag{1}$$ ##P## is the power that is received. The delay present in one arm of the interferometer is...

The number of mirrors typically used in Michelson Interferometer is 2. I am looking up the respective Wikipedia article and MIT's youtube video. I am wondering, for the sake of one of my experiment, whether more than 2 mirrors can be used in the interferometer? I require the traversing mirror...

I think we can all agree that when we are shooting many photons one by one, through an interferometer, we can eventually land up with the interference pattern. This can be explained by saying that two photons combining in some areas to give four photons and in some places annihilating each...

Homework Statement In-phase light from a laser with an effective power of 2x105J and a wavelength of 1064nm is sent down perpendicular 4km arms of the LIGO detector. (i) Determine the number of photons traveling in the interferometer arms. (ii) Assuming the detector is sensitive enough to...

Hi. In a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, there are mirrors in both paths. When a photon gets reflected on a mirror, it transfers momentum. Also, mirrors are classical objects that are usually not assumed to exist in superposition states. Shouldn't it (at least in principle) be possible to measure...

Hi Guys, I was tasked with building a cheap Hanbury-Brown Twiss Interferometer >$50-100. Below is an image of my design requirements which i managed to implement within a 32bit micrcotronoller and i am able to measure time differences down to 100ps over a range of up to 1us-1ms at around...

Homework Statement The aether-wind theory of the Michelson-Morley experiment was discussed in class for the special case where the arms of the interferometer (each of equal length L) are parallel and perpendicular to the wind. In this problem we consider the general case for an angular setting...

Charles Link submitted a new PF Insights post Fabry-Perot and Michelson Interferometry: A Fundamental Approach Continue reading the Original PF Insights Post.

I've been thinking about a communication system that could allow faster than light communication. The basic principle that would make this system work come from the double-slit experiment and Wheleer's delayed choice experiment, taking advantage of the different patterns that would appear on a...

Homework Statement In a Michelson interferometer, as one of the mirrors is moved, 250 bright fringes disappear into the centre. If the light wavelength was 800nm, how far was the mirror moved? Homework EquationsThe Attempt at a Solution My logic is: If we were to count how many passing bright...

I was trying to solve this excercise: Now I was able to find the eq. of geodetics (or directly by Christoffel formulas calculation or by the Lagrangian for a point particle). And I verified that such space constant coordinate point is a geodetic. Now, for the second point I...

Hi, First: I'm pretty sure my question has been asked numerous times, so I'm absolutely happy with links to other threads. I've used search but it didn't come up with satisfying responses, probably mainly because I don't really know what search terms to use. So the question is: How can a...

Hi, I think I have a good grasp of the principles underlying the Michelson-Morley experiment, but I am not sure about a detail. In basic textbooks a simplified situation is presented whereby the ether wind is along one of the two arms of the interferometer. Simple classical physics calculations...