Study on formation and transformation of the optical nonlinearity harmonics in the heterodyne laser interferometer

The accuracy of the heterodyne laser interferometer is strongly restricted by the optical nonlinearity harmonics. In order to mathematically reveal the formation and transformation mechanism of optical nonlinearity harmonics, the behavior of the nonlinearity harmonics is investigated with an optical nonlinearity expression based on the optical mixing parameters in the measurement signal. It is found that the formation and transformation of the first-order and second-order nonlinearity harmonics are closely related to the orthogonality of the optical mixing parameters. When the optical mixing parameters satisfy the orthogonal relation, the optical nonlinearity is purely the second-order harmonic whose peak-to-peak value is at least one order smaller than that of the first-order harmonic in the same optical mixing degree, indicating that a larger optical mixing level does not necessarily lead to a considerable optical nonlinearity error, which provides the theoretical guidance for building a heterodyne laser measurement system with low optical nonlinearity.