An interferometer is provided that minimizes the introduction of
non-linear errors into displacement measurements. In one embodiment,
non-linear errors are reduced by isolating reference and measurement
beams over most of their respective optical paths leading to the
detector, and by employing a separate amplitude-splitting non-polarizing
optical beam splitter for each beam input into the interferometer.
Additionally, the interferometer is scalable to an arbitrary number of
optical axes or inputs.