Environmental disturbance caused by mechanical vibration, air turbulence and thermal stratification makes a great impact on the accuracy of absolute flatness measurement, especially for the optical elements with the aperture larger than 600mm. Simplification of the measurement procedure is crucial for ensuring high precision and repeatability measurements. In this paper, the absolute flatness measurement approach combing the shift-rotation method and the second derivative method in polar coordinates is proposed to improve the stability and error tolerance of absolute measurement. The second derivative of the azimuth angle is achieved by rotating the tested flat, while that of the radial direction is achieved by translating high-order Zernike fitting. The absolute surface shape can be calculated simply by integration. The experiment procedure is simplified to two rotations and two translations with two involved mirrors. Furthermore, expanding the wavefront error to second-order can reduce the influence of environmental disturbance and make the measurement more robust. This study may provide technical support on the absolute flatness measurement for large aperture.
Optical flats used to realize pulse compression grating in ultra-intense and ultra-fast laser systems are large and have stringent face form requirements. This study employed an interferometer with an optical aperture of Φ800 mm to meet the demand for high-precision surface form measurements of meter-scale optical flats. The measurement accuracy of this interferometer improved using absolute surface form measurement. In addition, the full-aperture reflection surface form measurement of meter-scale optical flats was realized by exploiting sub-aperture stitching technology. The absolute measurement principle, based on the combination of rotational averaging and parity function, was used to calibrate the system error of the interferometer for absolute surface form measurement. The absolute surface form peak-to-valley (PV) repeatability (2σ) of the calibrated interferometer system error was 1.96 nm, and the root mean square (RMS) repeatability (2σ) was 0.44 nm. The calibration results show that the absolute surface-form measurement technique can effectively remove the interferometer system error and improve the surface-form measurement accuracy of the optical flat. The calibrated interferometer was then used to perform a two-dimensional stitching inspection of the meter-scale optical flat. The repeatability (2σ) of the PV value was 21.52 nm, whereas the repeatability (2σ) of the RMS value was 4.43 nm for a 1,680 × 1,100 × 200 mm flat. The measurement results show that the high-precision surface form measurement of meter-scale optical flats was realized.
Large optics are the key components of high power laser systems. The defects existing on the surface, under the surface and in the bulk are the main limitation to improve the output power of high power laser systems. The structural defects with micron or sub-millimeter size include surface scratches, digs, subsurface crack, bulk inclusions and bubbles, which are required to be removed during the manufacturing processes. The measurement precision and efficiency are the main challenges of developing novel measurement techniques due to their small size and random distribution on the surface with meter in length and within the materials with centimeters in depth. This paper presents our recent progress of measurement techniques based on laser scattering technique and microscopy for structural defects measurement of large optics. The laser scattering technique can quickly find the positions of these defects both on the surface and within the material. The microscopy is employed to precisely measure the size of the defects. The measurement strategy can not only improve the measurement efficiency but also obtain a considerable precision. Finally, the applications of these developed techniques for Nd-glass, laser crystals, optical coatings will also be presented, which has provided useful information both for manufacturing processes but also for laser systems design.
Optical flats used to realize pulse compression grating in ultra-intense and ultra-fast laser systems are large and have stringent face form requirements. This study employed an interferometer with an optical aperture of Φ800 mm to meet the demand for high-precision surface form measurements of meter-scale optical flats. The measurement accuracy of this interferometer improved using absolute surface form measurement. In addition, the full-aperture reflection surface form measurement of meter-scale optical flats was realized by exploiting sub-aperture stitching technology. The absolute measurement principle, based on the combination of rotational averaging and parity function, was used to calibrate the system error of the interferometer for absolute surface form measurement. The absolute surface form peak-to-valley (PV) repeatability (2σ) of the calibrated interferometer system error was 1.96 nm, and the root mean square (RMS) repeatability (2σ) was 0.44 nm. The calibration results show that the absolute surface-form measurement technique can effectively remove the interferometer system error and improve the surface-form measurement accuracy of the optical flat. The calibrated interferometer was then used to perform a two-dimensional stitching inspection of the meter-scale optical flat. The repeatability (2σ) of the PV value was 21.52 nm, whereas the repeatability (2σ) of the RMS value was 4.43 nm for a 1,680 × 1,100 × 200 mm flat. The measurement results show that the high-precision surface form measurement of meterscale optical flats was realized.
In this paper, we present a wide-spectrum plug-and-play Fizeau interferometric system, which can complete precision interferometric measurement at any wavelength in the range of 600-1600 nm with a maximum measurement aperture of 150 mm. The system can be designed with multiple optical fiber input terminals, different wavelengths share only one set of interferometric system, and no components need to be adjusted when switching the working wavelength. The development of the system is helpful to accurately measure the surface profile error of coated optical elements at a specified wavelength.
A design of high-precision 4-in. transmission spheres that can work in wide-band interferometric measurement is proposed. A motorized precision rotation mount is used to drive one of the lenses in the design to make the transmission sphere work at any wavelength in the wavelength range of 532 to 1550 nm, where the F-number of the transmission sphere remains constant during the movement of the lens. OpticStudio software is utilized to verify the design under F-numbers of 1.0, 2.2, and 3.3, and the results show that a transmission sphere with an F-number of 1.0 to 3.3 can be designed based on our model. The tolerance analysis and the secondary adjustment results show that the peak-to-valley transmission wavefront error of the transmission sphere can be controlled within λ / 20 in actual machining and assembly, which meets the requirement of high-precision interferometric measurement.
The giant laser device used in inertial confined fusion (ICF) experimental research is the largest optical engineering ever built by humans. It requires thousands of large-diameter optical components, especially for optical components with diagonal dimensions close to or exceeding 1 meter, which leads to the manufacturing is extremely difficult. Wavefront characteristics are one of the key parameters of meter-size optical components. Since different degrees of wavefront error are introduced during the material preparation, manufacturing and coating processes, it requires precise measurement and precise control throughout the manufacturing process. In this paper, the research work on key problems such as measurement accuracy, measurement aperture and measurement efficiency in the wavefront error detection of meter-size optical components is carried out and summarized.
Existing absolute measurement methods are difficult to avoid the replacement and rotation of the large aperture interferometer’s reference flat, and it is impossible to achieve in-situ absolute measurement on the basis of keeping the reference flat of the interferometer not rotating and replacing each other. In this paper, a test method based on oblique incidence is practically implemented in the interferometric measurement process, and an auxiliary rotating device for large aperture flat is designed. Three sets of wavefront data are achieved through cavity interference measurement with a Fizeau interferometer and one oblique incidence measurement. An iterative algorithm is applied to retrieve the absolute surface shape of the test flat. The absolute measurement experiment is carried out on the 600-mm aperture interferometer produced by Zygo. The experimental results show that the absolute surface error of the reference flat measured according to the proposed method is 2.0 nm (RMS), differing from the absolute measurement results based on the Zygo approach.
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