Standing waves in fiber-optic interferometers.

A study is presented giving the response of three types of fiber-optic interferometers by which a standing wave through an object is investigated. The three types are a Sagnac, Mach-Zehnder and Michelson-Morley interferometer. The response of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer is similar to the Sagnac interferometer. However, the Sagnac interferometer is much harder to study because of the fact that one input port and output port coincide. Further, the Mach-Zehnder interferometer has the advantage that the output ports are symmetric, reducing the systematic effects. Examples of standing wave light absorption in several simple objects are given. Attention is drawn to the influence of standing waves in fiber-optic interferometers with weak-absorbing layers incorporated. A method is described for how these can be theoretically analyzed and experimentally measured. Further experiments are needed for a thorough comparison between theory and experiment.