High-efficiency gold-coated cross-grating for heterodyne grating interferometer with improved signal contrast and optical subdivision

The gold-coated cross-grating is investigated to simultaneously improve the diffraction efficiency, signal contrast and optical subdivision in heterodyne grating interferometer (HGI). Based on the theories of Fresnel–Kirchhoff diffraction integral and rigorous coupled wave analysis (RCWA), the diffractive characteristics related to diffraction efficiency, wavelength selectivity and polarization dependency are analyzed. The analysis reveals that grating pitch less than twice of the incident wavelength ought to be adopted here to avoid the second-orders, and longer wavelength is preferred to achieve high diffraction efficiency in the visible region. Meanwhile, the equivalent efficiency for TE and TM polarization, probably up to 18.32% at the wavelength of 632.8 nm, can be obtained with normal incidence which results in a signal contrast of 100% theoretically. Additionally, an eightfold optical subdivision method with cross-gratings is proposed for HGIs, and it is applicable to nearly all the existing two-dimensional (2D) optical configurations. The experimental tests on diffraction field, polarization dependency and signal contrast are performed. The results show reasonable consistency with the theoretical analysis, which validates the capability of cross-gratings for HGIs.