Dual-frequency Doppler velocimeter based on delay interferometric optical phase-locking

We present a dual-frequency laser Doppler velocimeter (DF-LDV) relying on a DF laser source (DFLS) generated by optical phase-locking two individual lasers to a common unbalanced Mach–Zehnder interferometer, which allows achieving high stability regardless of the DF separation of the lasers. This DFLS is evaluated using an optical frequency comb, testifying to the generation of DFLS with large DF separation up to terahertz with flexible tunability and high stability. Demonstration of DF-LDV using the DFLS of ∼1.024 THz separation has achieved 1.62 × 10⁻² mm/s velocity resolution even for a slow velocity of 1.8 mm/s in a mere 5 s acquisition time, confirming the high resolution and efficient speckle noise suppression enabled by the proposed DF-LDV. Featuring high precision, flexibility, and robustness, this method is particularly attractive from the practical point of view.