19.04.2021

First World Interferometry Day

World Interferometry Day was held for the first time on 14 April 2021. Now it will take place every year to draw attention to research and developments based on the phenomenon of interference. Such interference, which occurs when two or more waves collide, is used by scientists to detect minute changes in position with the help of interferometry - at TU Ilmenau, for example, with the nanopositioning and nanometry machine, the most precise device of its kind in the world.

Interference occurs when two or more waves collide, for example when two stones are thrown into the water. Interferometers work on the basis of light, in which light waves with the unimaginably small wavelength of a few hundred nanometres are superimposed. But because the resulting interference patterns are visible to the naked eye, the smallest movements can be detected and measured with the greatest accuracy.

In April 1881, the US physicist of German origin Albert Abraham Michelson carried out interference measurements in a cellar of the Astrophysical Observatory in Potsdam, with which he wanted to determine the motion of the Earth relative to the ether - a hypothetical medium that was assumed at the time to be the carrier of light waves. Although it was not possible to determine a movement of the Earth with the experiments, the measuring instrument used, the Michelson interferometer named after the physicist and later Nobel Prize winner in physics, began its triumphal march in science and technology.

Even today, 140 years after Albert Abraham Michelson, numerous developments are based on the measurement and harnessing of interference. As recently as 2017, two scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for detecting gravitational waves - with the help of an interferometer. Innovative laser interferometers, which still work on the same principle as the Michelson interferometer, are used to measure distances, angles, vibrations and forces, for example. At the TU Ilmenau, scientists have been working for more than 20 years on ever more precise nanopositioning and nanomeasuring machines - high-end devices that are able to measure with picometre precision, i.e. to the trillionth of a metre. And as early as 1991, a company specializing in high-precision laser interferometry was founded out of the Institute for Process Measurement and Sensor Technology at the Technical University of Ilmenau. It was the current managing director of SIOS Meßtechnik GmbH, Dr. Denis Dontsov, who told the head of the Institute for Process Measurement and Sensor Technology, Prof. Eberhard Manske, about his idea to create an anniversary around the art of measuring extraordinarily small quantities and effects. World Interferometry Day was born.

Today, laser interferometry enables a wide variety of electronic applications in all sectors of the economy. Smartphones, for example, require interferometry to manufacture their integrated chips. To manufacture the billions of transistors on the chips, precision positioning tables on lithography equipment are regulated at breakneck speed using interferometers. And automation systems for precision manufacturing in industry would also be inconceivable without high-precision calibration and verification - carried out with the aid of laser interferometers. In general, modern industrial manufacturing now requires such precise machining processes that today we speak of ultra-precision machining or high-end precision manufacturing.

 

On World Interferometry Day - according to the idea of the initiators Manske and Dontsov - national and international experts should come together to give technical lectures and carry out experiments and experimental demonstrations. Prof. Eberhard Manske would like to strengthen scientific and economic cooperation in the field of interferometry and precision metrology with a wide variety of activities related to interferometry, which took place in this Corona Year 2021 on April 14, mainly on the Internet: "I am confident that with this annual day of action we will strengthen the worldwide scientific community and initiate a sustainable development of this fascinating field of research. I call on all interested parties to participate in World Interferometry Day with demonstrations, experiments, lectures and other actions."

Next year, World Interferometry Day will be held on April 6.

Information:https://www.world-interferometry-day.com

 

Contact: Prof. Eberhard Manske Institute for Process Measurement and Sensor Technology +49 3677 69-5050eberhard.manske@tu-ilmenau.de