Hi folks,
I would like to automate our experiment. The mirror/prism, as well as the photodetector, are mounted on rotating stages (both the detector and stage have separate motors/controllers). I'm attempting to automate this entire experiment by using a graphical user interface. The problem is that once the turning begins, the reflected ray does not precisely land on the exact location on the photodetector and finally does not fall on the sensor area at increasing degrees.
I think the issue is that as the mirror moves, the laser beam hits a different spot on the mirror and thus theta/2*theta relationship is not exactly held. What is the solution?
Hi Hamza,
In order to understand the problem better, what kind of motors/controllers do you use to control the rotation/translation? What is the accuracy of the incremental step, the bi-directional repeatability and the pitch and yaw movements?
In terms of the optical alignment, do you check the beam pointing mismatch as a result of the incremental rotation/translation? And do you check whether everything goes well when you operate the experiment manually before going for all automatic operation?
It can be that the bi-directional repeatability and the pitch/yaw movement errors of your rotation/translations stages are not good enough to avoid the misalignment of your optical beam when components are rotated/translated. Or else, the optical alignment is not at the optimum and thus you observe misalignment as a result of your rotation/translation. I experienced such issues at the beginning of the development of an instrument, which is a scanning Michelson interferometer.
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