Novel white-light interferometer using an electronically scanned Mach-Zehnder interferometer

A theoretical analysis and experimental evaluation of a novel Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI), used as a recovery interferometer in an electronically-scanned white-light interferometer is reported. This modified version of a MZI has the advantages of being very simple and compact, with high stability and does not introduce any spatial `misoverlapping' of the beams. In addition, since only one beamsplitter is employed in the interferometer (instead of the usual two used in a conventional MZI), the system is relatively easy to implement and at low cost. Furthermore, this configuration can be simply set to cover a wide range of optical path difference values by simply changing the angle and position of one of the mirrors. This gives the interferometer the advantage of being easily adapted for a range of different measurement applications.