Active stabilization of a Michelson interferometer at an arbitrary phase with sub-nm resolution

Abstract

We report on the active stabilization of a Michelson interferometer at an arbitrary phase angle with a precision better than one degree at $λ= 632.8$ nm, which corresponds to an optical path difference between the two arms of less than 1 nm. The stabilization method is ditherless and the error signal is computed from the spatial shift of the interference pattern of a reference laser, measured in real-time with a CCD array detector. We discuss the usefulness of this method for nanopositioning, optical interferometry and quantum optical experiments.