Sub-micron absolute distance measurements in sub-millisecond times with dual free-running femtosecond Er fiber-lasers

Published

September 12, 2011

Author(s)

Tze-An Lui, Nathan R. Newbury, Ian R. Coddington

Abstract

We demonstrate a simplified dual-comb lidar setup for precision absolute ranging that can achieve a ranging precision at a meter of 2 υm in 140 υs acquisition time. With averaging, the precision drops below 1 micron at 0.8 msec and below 200 nm at 20 ms. The system can measure the distance to multiple targets with negligible dead zones and a ranging ambiguity of 1 meter. The system is much simpler than a previous coherent dual-comb lidar because the two combs are replaced by free-running, saturable-absorber-based femtosecond Er fiber lasers, rather than tightly phase-locked combs, with the entire time base provided by a single 10-digit frequency counter. Despite the simpler design, the system provides a factor of three improved performance over the previous coherent dual comb lidar system.

Citation

Optics Express

Volume

19

Issue

19

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

distance measurement, frequency comb, LIDAR

Citation

Lui, T. , Newbury, N. and Coddington, I. (2011), Sub-micron absolute distance measurements in sub-millisecond times with dual free-running femtosecond Er fiber-lasers, Optics Express, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=908892 (Accessed October 14, 2025)