Recent advances in absolute distance measurements using femtosecond light pulses

Abstract

Absolute distance measurement (ADM) with high precision is required for various fields of precision engineering, which has long been implemented by means of time-of-flight measurement of a pulsed laser, intensity or frequency modulation of a continuous-wave laser, and cross-correlation of pseudo-random micro-wave signals. Recently, in response to increasing demands on the measurement precision and range beyond conventional limits, femtosecond pulse lasers began to draw attention as a new light source that permits realizing various advanced ADM principles such as synthetic radiofrequency wavelength generation, Fourier-transform-based dispersive analysis and multi-wavelength interferometry. In this talk, we present the state-of-the-art measurement principles and performance demonstrated by exploiting the unique temporal and spectral characteristics of femtosecond laser pulses for high-precision ADM applications.