Chromatic dispersion effects in coherent absolute ranging

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Abstract
Multiple-wavelength interferometers and chirped-frequency coherent laser radars use the variation of interferometric phase as a function of wavelength to measure optical path lengths. Since these instruments generally include a number of dispersive components, the group-velocity index must be included in the path-length calculation. A simple experiment is performed to show that neglecting first-order chromatic dispersion can lead to measurement errors of the order of 1% of the distance.