Laser based optical interferometer manometer design for primary pressure standard in India

Abstract The SI unit of pressure, i.e. Pascal is realized with mechanical devices such as ultrasonic interferometer manometers and pressure balances for the pressure range 1 Pa to 100 kPa. Recently, optical interferometer manometers are being used to realize Pascal. Such a realization is mercury-free and environmentally friendly and does not depend on any mechanical motions as in piston gauges and is based on physical constants. It consists of an optical Fabry-Perot cavity as a refractometer and is based on the measurement of the resonant frequency of the cavity using lasers. In this paper, we report the theoretical calculations for such an optical cavity and discuss various parameters for the laser required for developing such a cavity-based refractometer system. We present the mechanical design for the dual cavity and the effect of pressure on the elastic deformation of such cavities using finite element analysis. We present an all-fiber optical set-up for the lasers, to be used for the next generation of primary pressure standards in the barometric region of pressure at CSIR-National physical laboratory, India.