The measurement of ultraweak liquid surface wave by laser interferometry

Abstract We describe a simple experiment on the interference of refraction light by ultraweak liquid surface wave at low frequency. The surface wave profile is generated by electrically driven vertical oscillations exciters. The high visibility and stable laser interference fringes were gathered experimentally. The theoretical light intensity distribution agrees well with the observations. In particular, we show the relation between the light intensity distribution and the characteristic features of the surface wave. In addition, we can measure the amplitude and wavelength of the ultraweak liquid surface wave at low frequency by this means.