Construction Guidelines for Universal Scanning Fabry-Perot Interferometer Kit

Version 1.10 (19-Aug-2025)

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Sam Goldwasser
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Introduction

These guidelines apply to the Universal SFPI kit, which has the complete set of parts for the "Deluxe SFPI" (Type 2 in the eBay listing) and additional parts to construct a variety of high resolution SFPIs. The resulting SFPIs can be used with any single spatial mode (TEMoo) laser within its wavelength range, though they have been designed with narrow beam HeNe lasers in mind.

At a minimum, the following parts are included:

Detailed construction guidelines for each of the specific SFPIs may be found in the manuals for the Deluxe Scanning Fabry-Perot Interferometer Kit (also known as SFPI Kit 2) and Long and High Resolution Scanning Fabry-Perot Interferometer Kits.

If you're new to SFPIs, I would recommend starting with the set of parts for the Deluxe Scanning Fabry-Perot Interferometer Kit as that will definitely be several orders of magnitude simpler to construct and align than one with a cavity length of half a meter or more. After that, perhaps one with a cavity length of 11.54" (29.3 cm) using the 1 meter RoC mirrors, which can be built totally from parts not needed for the short Deluxe SFPI.

And while I don't recommend the Ultra-High Resolution SFPIs using the 60 cm RoC 99.99%+ ROY mirrors for anything other than bragging rights to the highest finesse on your block ;-), they, too, can be configured at either confocal or other cavity lengths for the 60 cm RoC mirrors.

For more on SFPIs, see the section: Scanning Fabry-Perot Interferometers of "Sam's Lsaer FAQ".