Simple phase-shifting method in a wedge-plate lateral-shearing interferometer

Complete characterization of ultrashort optical pulses with a phase-shifting wedged reversal shearing interferometer

The ability of an interferometer to characterize the spatial information of a light beam is often limited by the temporal profile of the beam, with femtosecond pulse characterization being particularly challenging. In this study, we developed a simple, stable, controllable shearing and vectorial phase-shifting wedged reversal shearing interferometer that is able to characterize all types of coherent and partially coherent light beams. The proposed interferometer consists of only a single beam splitter cube with one wedged entrance face and is insensitive to environmental vibration due to its common path configuration. A near zero-path length difference of the proposed interferometer ensures its operation for ultrashort pulses, providing, for the first time, a simple and stable interferometric tool to fully characterize sub-100  fs laser pulses. All common beam characterization can be carried out with the interferometer, such as the amplitude, phase, polarization, wavelength, and pulse duration. Furthermore, this technique is sensitive to the wavefront tilt and can be used for precise beam alignment. Therefore, this interferometer can be an essential tool for beam characterization, optical imaging, and the testing required for a wide range of applications, including astronomy, biomedicine, ophthalmology, optical testing and imaging systems, and adaptive optics.

Shape measurement with modified phase-shift lateral shearing interferometry illumination and radial basis function

Three-dimensional shapes of objects were evaluated with modified phase-shift lateral shearing interferometry illumination and radial basis function. A simple optical system was developed to create the fringe pattern based on the Murty interferometer. The phase shift was generated only by moving a plane-parallel plate along an in-plane parallel direction. A novel moving radial basis function method was presented to improve the quality of fringe patterns. And the proper calculation window size was given based on numerical simulation. Three-dimensional shapes of two kinds of objects were determined to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method, and the reconstructed height distributions were in good accordance with the referenced data.

Phase-shifting lateral shearing interferometry using wedge-plate and interferometric grating

A simple and robust method for introducing a phase-shifting test procedure in a wedge-plate shearing interferometer is proposed. The output of the wedge-plate lateral shearing interferometer (LSI) is superposed onto a sinusoidal grating, forming a moiré pattern. The in-plane translation of grating perpendicular to the grating lines is used for introducing a known amount of phase shifts in the interferometer. Direct measurement of phase using a four-step phase-shifting method is undertaken. The applicability of this devised phase-shifting wedge-plate LSI has been successfully tested for setting the collimation position of optical beams. Good accuracy and precision are achieved.

Liquid-crystal phase-shifting lateral shearing interferometer with improved fringe contrast for 3D surface profilometry

We report the development of a common-path and nonmechanical scanning phase-shifting lateral shearing interferometer based on a homogeneous gap and wedge-shaped gap liquid-crystal (LC) cell. The modified cell consists of semi-reflecting and fully reflecting glass plates with LC material sandwiched between them so that the amount of reflected light from both the surfaces is nearly equal, thus generating high contrast interference fringes. The thickness of the LC cell was maintained at ~3 μm uniformly for a homogeneous gap and a varying wedge gap was also introduced between two glass plates. Phase-shifting linear fringe patterns of high contrast were generated. The phase-shifted interferograms were projected onto an object and the distorted interferograms were recorded by a CCD camera. The phase-shifting fringe analysis technique was used to reconstruct the 3D shape of the object. The present system is compact and low cost.

Broadband light source shearing interferometer using Savart plate and angular scanning technique

A shearing interferometer based on using broadband light source, Savart plate, and angular scanning technique is proposed for slope contour measurements in this Letter. Of which, the Savart plate divides the wavefront reflected from the detected surface into two laterally displaced ones, the interference pattern generated by the interference of the divided wavefronts is modulated by an envelope function, and the slope contour of the detected surface is determined by examining the shifting of the darkest fringe as the shear plate is angularly scanned. A setup for realizing the interferometer is constructed. The experimental results of using this setup agree the validity and feasibility of the proposed interferometer.

Wavefront reversal technique for self-referencing collimation testing

We present a wavefront reversal technique to produce a dual-field fringe pattern for self-referencing collimation testing in wedge-plate lateral-shear interferometry. The method requires only a suitably placed cubic beam splitter to produce two replicas of the fringe field formed by the wedge-plate lateral-shear interferometer. One of the replicas has a fringe pattern that is the reverse of the other. With these two fringe fields, the collimation testing has a built-in reference, and the detection sensitivity is twice that of a single-wedge-plate technique.

Simple multifrequency and phase-shifting fringe-projection system based on two-wavelength lateral shearing interferometry for three-dimensional profilometry

We propose a simple multifrequency spatial-carrier and phase-shifting fringe-projection system based on two-wavelength lateral shearing interferometry (LSI). In this system a wedge-shaped plate lateral shearing interferometer is used and, owing to the presence of tilt, a finite number of fringes parallel to the direction of the shear appears; hence a significant spatial-carrier frequency is generated at the focus position. We further enhance the spatial-carrier frequency either by changing the wavelength of the laser light or by slight defocusing. A synthetic interferogram with low spatial-carrier frequency is obtained by use of laser light of two wavelengths simultaneously in the lateral shear interferometer. We obtain the phase-shifted fringe patterns from the same setup by simply moving the wedge plate in an in-plane parallel direction, using a linear translator. The fringe projection system was tested for measurement of the three-dimensional shape of a discontinuous object. The present system has many advantages; e.g., it is a common-path interferometry and hence is insensitive to external vibrations, is compact in size, and is relatively inexpensive.