Patent ID: 7796267

Claim:
A micromachined interferometer, comprising: a half plane beam splitter optically coupled to receive an incident beam and to split said incident beam into two interfering beams, each propagating in a different medium; a fixed mirror embedded within a first medium and optically coupled to receive a first one of said interfering beams and to reflect said first one of said interfering beams back towards said half plane beam splitter to produce a first reflected interfering beam; a moveable mirror within a second medium and optically coupled to receive a second one of said interfering beams directly from said half plane beam splitter and to reflect said second one of said interfering beams back towards said half plane beam splitter to produce a second reflected interfering beam; a detection plane optically coupled to detect an interference pattern produced as a result of interference between said first reflected interfering beam and said second reflected interfering beam; an actuator coupled to said moveable mirror to cause a displacement of said moveable mirror, said displacement producing an optical path length difference between said two interfering beams equal to twice said displacement; and wherein in normal alignment conditions in which respective surfaces of said fixed mirror and said moveable mirror are perpendicular to respective directions of beam propagation, an angle between a plane of said fixed mirror and a plane of said moveable mirror is less than 90 degrees.