Mach-Zehnder interferometer
The Mach-Zehnder interferometer is a further development of the Jamin interferometer . It was 1891 / 1892 independently from the Austrian Ludwig Mach (son of Ernst Mach ) and his Swiss colleague Ludwig Zehnder developed.
functionality
Incident light is split into two arms by a beam splitter . After passing through the two paths, the optical length of which can be different, the two beams are superimposed again with another beam splitter. The second beam splitter is implemented as a Bragg mirror , one side of which shifts the phase of the reflected beam by 180 °, but the other side does not. This causes constructive interference at one output and destructive interference at the other.
A Mach-Zehnder interferometer can be used both for modulating light through targeted phase modulation in one arm of the interferometer and for measuring phase shifts .
In photonic communications technology , integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometers are used for wavelength-dependent demultiplexing .
literature
- Ludwig Zehnder: A new interference refractor . In: Zeitschrift für Instrumentenkunde . No. 11 , 1891, p. 275-285 .
- Ludwig Mach: About an interference refractor . In: Zeitschrift für Instrumentenkunde . No. 12 , 1892, p. 89-93 .
See also
Web links
- Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Saleh, Teich: Fundamentals of Photonics. 2nd revised edition, 2008