This study presents an analysis of the cyclic nonlinearity in the homodyne interferometer starting from the interference principle. We present the design for an enhanced homodyne interferometer without DC offset, for which the nonlinearity model will not be influenced by the intensity of the measurement beam. Our experimental results show that the enhanced interferometer can suppress the nonlinearity to less than 0.5 nm with a system calibration involving gain adjustment and phase-correction methods.

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In this paper, we demonstrate a method using a frequency comb, which can precisely measure the refractive index of water. We have developed a simple system, in which a Michelson interferometer is placed into a quartz-glass container with a low expansion coefficient, and for which compensation of the thermal expansion of the water container is not required. By scanning a mirror on a moving stage, a pair of cross-correlation patterns can be generated. We can obtain the length information via these cross-correlation patterns, with or without water in the container. The refractive index of water can be measured by the resulting lengths. Long-term experimental results show that our method can measure the refractive index of water with a high degree of accuracy—measurement uncertainty at 10−5 level has been achieved, compared with the values calculated by the empirical formula.