Homodyne laser Doppler vibrometer on silicon-on-insulator with integrated 90 degree optical hybrids.

A miniaturized homodyne laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) with a compact 90° optical hybrid is experimentally demonstrated on a CMOS compatible silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. Optical components on this platform usually have inadequate suppressions of spurious reflections, which significantly influence the performance of the LDV. Numerical compensation methods are implemented to effectively decrease the impact of these spurious reflections. With the help of these compensation methods, measurements for both super-half-wavelength and sub-half-wavelength vibrations are demonstrated. Results show that the minimal detectable velocity is around 1.2 μm/s.