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Zoellner A, Tan S, Saraf S, et al. Differential optical shadow sensor for sub-nanometer displacement measurement and its application to drag-free satellites. Opt Express. 2017;25(21):25201-25211doi: 10.1364/OE.25.025201.
Zoellner, A., Tan, S., Saraf, S., Alfauwaz, A., DeBra, D., Buchman, S., & Lipa, J. A. (2017). Differential optical shadow sensor for sub-nanometer displacement measurement and its application to drag-free satellites. Optics express, 25(21), 25201-25211. https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.25.025201
Zoellner, Andreas, et al. "Differential optical shadow sensor for sub-nanometer displacement measurement and its application to drag-free satellites." Optics express vol. 25,21 (2017): 25201-25211. doi: https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.25.025201
Zoellner A, Tan S, Saraf S, Alfauwaz A, DeBra D, Buchman S, Lipa JA. Differential optical shadow sensor for sub-nanometer displacement measurement and its application to drag-free satellites. Opt Express. 2017 Oct 16;25(21):25201-25211. doi: 10.1364/OE.25.025201. PMID: 29041190.
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Opt Express. 2017 Oct 16;25(21):25201-25211. doi: 10.1364/OE.25.025201.

Differential optical shadow sensor for sub-nanometer displacement measurement and its application to drag-free satellites.

Optics express

Andreas Zoellner, Si Tan, Shailendhar Saraf, Abdul Alfauwaz, Dan DeBra, Sasha Buchman, John A Lipa

PMID: 29041190 DOI: 10.1364/OE.25.025201

Abstract

We present a method for 3D sub-nanometer displacement measurement using a set of differential optical shadow sensors. It is based on using pairs of collimated beams on opposite sides of an object that are partially blocked by it. Applied to a sphere, our 3-axis sensor module consists of 8 parallel beam-detector sets for redundancy. The sphere blocks half of each beam's power in the nominal centered position, and any displacement can be measured by the differential optical power changes amongst the pairs of detectors. We have experimentally demonstrated a displacement sensitivity of 0.87nm/Hz at 1 Hz and 0.39nm/Hz at 10 Hz. We describe the application of the module to the inertial sensor of a drag-free satellite, which can potentially be used for navigation, geodesy and fundamental science experiments as well as ground based applications.

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