Six common types are the Michelson, Fabry-Perot, Fizeau, Mach-Zehnder, Sagnac, and Twyman-Green interferometers. Photo: A Fabry-Perot type interferometer designed by Dr Samuel Stratton of the US NIST in 1907 and used for measuring the wavelengths of neon lines.
A modulator is a circuit that combines two different signals in such a way that they can be pulled apart later and the information obtained.
Because of their wide application, interferometers come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They are used to measure everything from the smallest variations on the surface of a microscopic organism, to the structure of enormous expanses of gas and dust in the distant Universe, and now, to detect gravitational waves.
The Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) can be used to test changes in the refractive index of sucrose solutions at different concentrations. The two optical coupling structures are a duplicate of the beam splitter, an optical component of the interferometer.
The Mach-Zehnder interferometer is a particularly simple device for demonstrating interference by division of amplitude. A light beam is first split into two parts by a beamsplitter and then recombined by a second beamsplitter.
An IQ modulator is a device that converts baseband information into RF signals. Internally, two double-balanced mixers are combined as shown below. By modulating with both in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) inputs, any arbitrary output amplitude and phase can be selected.
Money of zero maturity (MZM), which represents all money that is readily available, is a measure of the liquid money supply within an economy. It includes money as cash in hand or money in a checking account, for example.
In optical communications, intensity modulation (IM) is a form of modulation in which the optical power output of a source is varied in accordance with some characteristic of the modulating signal. Recovery of the modulating signal is usually by direct detection, not heterodyning.
Lithium niobate modulator is an electro-optic device that uses a signal-controlled element which exhibits an electro-optic effect to modulate an optical beam. The basic knowledge behind these modulators is to modify the electric-optical properties of a material such as amplitude, phase, position, and frequency.
Such devices can be realized, e.g. on lithium niobate (LiNbO3), which has substantial electro-optic coefficients. Due to the small electrode distances, such devices can work with relatively low electrical voltages, and they can also allow for quite high modulation frequencies.
Phase modulation (PM) is a modulation pattern for conditioning communication signals for transmission. It encodes a message signal as variations in the instantaneous phase of a carrier wave. Phase modulation is one of the two principal forms of angle modulation, together with frequency modulation.
A phase modulator is an optical modulator which can be used to control the optical phase of a laser beam. Various kinds of phase modulators are used within the area of integrated optics, where the modulated light propagates in waveguides.
When the light waves reflected from the inner and outer surface combine, they will interfere with each other, removing or reinforcing some parts of white light by destructive or constructive interference. This results in color.
