Nanometer-scale displacement measurement based on an orthogonal dual Michelson interferometer

In this Letter,we propose a simple structure of an orthogonal type double Michelson interferometer.The orthogonal detection method overcomes the problems of uneven ranging sensitivity and the inability of traditional interferometers to determine the displacement direction.The displacement measurement principle and signal processing method of the orthogonal double interferometer are studied.Unlike the arctangent algorithm,the displacement analysis uses the arc cosine algorithm,avoiding any pole limit in the distance analysis process.The minimum step size of the final experimental displacement system is 5 nm,which exhibits good repeatability,and the average error is less than 0.12 nm.