Patent attributes
The displacement detector includes: a light source 140; a beam splitter 170 for dividing the light, which is sent from the light source 140, into two beams of light; reflection mirrors 181, 182 provided for the two beams of light sent from the beam splitter 170, for reflecting these two beams of light and making them incident upon a scale 110; and corner cubes 191, 192 provided for the beams of diffracted light, which are generated when two beams of light incident upon the scale 110 are diffracted by the diffraction grating 111, wherein the corner cubes 191, 192 retroreflect the diffracted light and make the light incident upon the scale as retroreflected light. The incident angle to grating groove formed between the incident light and the normal line vector of the scale is larger than the diffraction angle formed between the retroreflected light and the normal line vector of the scale.