Understanding interferometry for micro-cantilever displacement detection

• Alexander von Schmidsfeld,
• Tobias Nörenberg,
• Matthias Temmen and
• Michael Reichling

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 841–851, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.76

• displacement noise spectral density strongly decreases with decreasing distance between the fiber-end and the cantilever, yielding a noise floor of 24 fm/Hz0.5 under optimum conditions. Keywords: displacement noise spectral density; interferometer; non-contact atomic force microscope (NC-AFM); opto-mechanic

• effects; Introduction A common method for measuring the displacement of a micro-cantilever or another micro-mechanical device is interferometric displacement detection. The most basic interferometer setup is the Michelson interferometer using two mirrors for the superposition of two light beams [1][2]. A