A novel polarization modulator for a Moire system with grating imaging

A polarization modulator based on splitting with a Savart plate and rotation of an analyzer for a moire system with grating imaging is presented, and its modulation principle is analyzed. The polarization modulator is simple and achromatic. It is composed of a polarizer, a Savart plate, and an analyzer. The polarizer and the Savart plate are placed in front of the index grating to split the image of the scale grating in the moire system. The analyzer is placed behind the grating and rotated to realize the modulation of the moire signal. The analyzer can be rotated either continually with high speed or step by step with low speed to form different modulation modes. The polarization modulator makes the moire system insensitive to the change of initial intensity. In experiments, we verified the usefulness of the polarization modulator.

Calibration method for a photoelastic modulator with a peak retardation of less than a half-wavelength

A new calibration method for a photoelastic modulator is proposed. The calibration includes a coarse calibration and a fine calibration. In the coarse calibration, the peak retardation of the photoelastic modulator is set near 1.841 rad. In the fine calibration, the value of the zeroth Bessel function is obtained. The zeroth Bessel function is approximated as a linear equation to directly calculate the peak retardation. In experiments, the usefulness of the calibration method is verified and the calibration error is less than 0.014 rad. The calibration is immune to the intensity fluctuation of the light source and independent of the circuit parameters. The method specially suits the calibration of a photoelastic modulator with a peak retardation of less than a half-wavelength. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.