| The following document summarizes a journey through the world of diffraction gratings, covering topics such as their history, fabrication, metrology, and uses in some of the most precise scientific experiments ever proposed.;This thesis describes the ways gratings can improve interferometer performance by simplifying thermal management and discusses the essential challenges that must be overcome before they can be adopted. The use of gratings requires new interferometer geometries. We show cases where these can be implemented simply and compactly.;Gravitational-wave interferometry imposes many requirements on grating components. Using improved metrology methods, we demonstrate that large dielectric gratings with uniformly high efficiency can be fabricated and validated. In particular, we measure the diffraction efficiency of two 20-cm-scale gratings over their entire apertures. The values taken from across their surfaces collectively had means and standard deviations of mu = 99.293% and sigma = 0.164%, and mu =99.084% and sigma =0.079%.;We also present simplified models of thermal distortions in gratings, and show them to be in good agreement with measurements conducted by a wavefront sensor.;Though diffraction gratings have long been used for spectroscopy and pulse compression, it was not until recently that researchers have explored their ability to split and recombine single-frequency CW laser sources for high-precision interferometry. Gravitational-wave detection, one of the most challenging sensing applications to date, is being investigated by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) projects. Future generations of LIGO and LISA detectors may incorporate gratings as key optical components.;Special focus is given to experimental demonstrations that have achieved highly precise measurements of translational and rotational motion, also known as displacement and angular sensing. For the former, resonant-cavity methods that have achieved both high sensitivity and high dynamic range (10 pm/√Hz at 1 Hz over 620 nm) are described. For the latter, a novel device known as the grating angular sensor that has achieved a sensitivity level of 0.2 nrad/√Hz at 1 kHz is presented. |
