We describe a diffraction-grating interferometer that enables us to obtain a high contrast ratio of 120 between the test wave and the reference wave by optimizing the groove shape of a blazed-type diffraction grating. The high contrast provides good visibility for the resulting interference fringes when testing aspheric mirrors using computer-generated holograms (CGHs). Generally CGHs perform wavefront nulling, but greatly attenuate the intensity of the test wave. We present experimental results for an aspheric concave mirror of 600 mm diameter obtained using a blazed diffraction grating with a 1/1200 mm groove spacing and a 17-deg blazed angle. The binary-type CGH used for the experiments provided low transmittance efficiency but was cost effective.
The phase-shifting diffraction-grating interferometer uses a diffraction grating that performs manifold functions of beam splitting, beam recombining, and phase shifting. The reference and measurement waves generated by means of diffraction have different amplitudes depending on their orders of diffraction, so the interference fringe pattern resulting from the two waves tends to yield poor visibility. In this investigation, we select a phase grating of reflection type and attempt to improve the interference visibility with optimization of the groove shape of the grating through numerical analysis. And we apply the proposed analytic method to the CGH null system for testing a large-scale aspheric mirror, which adopt a binary amplitude CGH and a new phase-shifting diffraction-grating interferometer.
We present a new concept for a phase-shifting diffraction-grating interferometer, which is intended to test concave mirrors simply using a single reflective diffraction grating and fiber optic confocal microscope focusing optics. Our configuration allows generating a high-quality reference wave from a small active grating area that can be readily fabricated with good homogeneity of grating substrate and uniformity of groove spacing. The test and reference waves encounter no other optical components, so only a small active surface area of the grating affects the test result. The fiber optic confocal microscope design adopted to solve the alignment problem between the grating and the converging wave greatly reduces systematic errors of the interferometer. In addition, the phase-shifting capability provided by translating the grating using a microactuator enables one to attain nanometer accuracy in optical figure metrology.
We present a novel concept of phase-shifting diffraction-grating interferometer, which is intended for the optical testing of concave mirrors with high precision. The interferometer is configured with a single reflective diffraction grating, which performs manifold functions of beam splitting, beam recombination, and phase shifting. The reference and test wave fronts are generated by means of reflective diffraction at the focal plane of a microscope objective with large numerical aperture, which allows testing fast mirrors with low f-numbers. The fiber-optic confocal design is adopted for the microscope objective to focus a converging beam on the diffractive grating, which greatly reduces the alignment error between the focusing optics and the diffraction grating. Translating the grating provides phase shifting, which enables to measure the figure errors of the test mirror to nanometer accuracy.
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