Phase profile analysis of transparent objects through the use of a two windows interferometer based on a one beam splitter configuration

In this research we implemented a two windows interferometer based on polarization phase shifting and grating interferometry techniques in order to retrieve the phase data profile of the object in a single capture. The optical configuration has two optical beams with circular polarization in opposite directions, and it is coupled with a 4-f system. An amplitude grid is used as a filter which is placed at the Fourier plane to obtain replicas of each beam which can properly interfere, depending on the separation between beams. The interferometer presents the capability of changing the beam separation in order to make different orders interfere properly. The interference patterns produced can be separately modulated through the operation of linear polarizer's placed on each interference replica. In order to present the capabilities of the system we will select four interferograms result of contiguous orders interference.     

Disturbance-free laser diode Sagnac interferometer using direct phase modulation

We exploited the wavelength tunability of the laser diode of a phase-shifting Sagnac interferometer to realize disturbance-free measurements. The Sagnac interferometer is robust against mechanical disturbances because it has a common path configuration and requires no special references. An unbalanced optical path was introduced between p- and s-polarized beams to enable easy phase shifting by direct current modulation. The experimental results indicate that the proposed system is effective for performing precise disturbance-free measurements.     

Microscopy of non-birefringent transmissive phase samples using Sagnac laser interferometer

A cyclic interferometer, appropriately combined with a long working distance microscope objective, is adapted for quantitative phase microscopy. In such an arrangement, the sample information, in terms of the diffracted orders emerging from the sample, is carried by both the counter propagating beams within the cyclic interferometer. However, positioning the sample close to the input/output cube beam splitter and use of a suitably converging laser beam of light as the input to the interferometer ensure that only one of the counter propagating beams carries the object information to the objective while the other beam, which serves as the reference, allows only the undiffracted component to contribute to the process of image formation. Use of suitable polarization optics renders the interferometer its polarization phase shifting property. Using the proposed arrangement, the experimental results showing the quantitative 3D phase rendering of polystyrene microspheres and micro-wells etched in glass are presented.     

Solid-state interferometry of a pentaprism for generating cylindrical vector beam

We demonstrated the generation of a cylindrical vector laser beam using a pentaprism interferometer. The solid-state interferometer was made up of a trapezoid and right-angle prism, whose hypotenuse face was implemented with a polarization beam splitter coating that split a rotated TEM₀₁ mode beam into two orthogonal polarizations. The Ppolarized beam was reflected inside the prism twice, allowing a mode pattern without inversion; however, the Spolarized beam was reflected once resulting in mode patterns that form P-polarized beams rotated by 90°. We also held the phase shift of the two beams to zero by use of a phase shifter, thus the output of the superimposed beam was a radially polarized beam. We demonstrated the mode pattern and polarization purity of the output beam through the use of this configuration.     

一种用于动态过程测量的实时偏振相移方法

利用一种特殊的相位龙基光栅和偏振相移技术,可同时获得四幅具有不同相移的干涉图,由此可计算出被测物体的全场相位分布,从而实现对支态过程相位的测量。将该方法应用于马赫－曾德尔干涉系统的散斑干涉系统,分别测量了液体的折射率变化和固体的离面位移,给出了实验结果。     

Non-contact detection of laser-generated surface acoustic waves using fiber optic Sagnac interferometer

A high powered Q-switched Nd:YAG laser was used to excite the surface waves, and an optical fiber sensor was used to detect the out-of-plane displacements due to the propagating waves. This sensor is based on the fiber optic Sagnac interferometer, which has the path-matched configuration and does not require active stabilization. Quadrature phase bias between two interfering laser beams in the Sagnac loop is applied by controlling the birefringence in an optical path using a fiber polarization controller. A stable quadrature phase bias can be confirmed by observing the interferometer output according to the change of phase bias. Additional signal processing is not needed for the detection of ultrasonic waves using the Sagnac interferometer. The performance of the fiber optic Sagnac interferometer was investigated, and laser-generated surface wave signals were detected using this fiber optic sensor. The developed fiber optic sensor configured in this study is very simple and is effective for non-contact detection of ultrasonic waves.     

用四台阶相位板产生涡旋光束

涡旋光束的产生与应用是当前光学领域的研究热点. 利用傅里叶级数展开法分析了四台阶相位板的相位结构, 发现四台阶相位板可看作是由一系列不同拓扑荷数的螺旋相位板所组成, 用线偏振光直接照射相位板时, 将产生多级衍射光波, 各级衍射光均为不同拓扑荷数的涡旋光波, 由于多级衍射光波间的干涉导致光强分布偏离轴对称分布, 因而与涡旋光波有一定差距. 在此基础上, 提出了用四台阶相位板产生涡旋光束的新方案, 借助于Mach-Zehnder 干涉仪光路, 两块四台阶相位板产生的衍射光干涉叠加, 通过调节干涉仪光路的相位差, 使一部分衍射级干涉相消, 另一部分衍射级干涉相长, 相互加强, 从而把线偏振光转换为涡旋光束. 数值模拟计算了几种周期数不同的四台阶相位板衍射光强和角动量分布, 并与螺旋相位板进行比较, 证明用简单的四台阶相位板不仅能够获得与用螺旋相位板相同的涡旋光束, 而且可以用周期数较小的四台阶相位板产生具有大拓扑荷数的涡旋光束, 降低了制作相位板的难度.     

Measurement of shock waves using phase shifting pulsed holographic interferometer

A phase shifting pulsed holographic interferometer was applied to the experimental study of the propagation of laser-induced shock waves over metal plates. A double-pulsed ruby laser was used to generate the shock waves and to make a holographic interferogram of the wave fields. The phase shifting method with a dual-reference beam solved the sign ambiguity problem in holographic fringe patterns and allowed a quantitative evaluation of the phase of the interference patterns. The transient surface profile and propagation behavior of the shock wave over plates were investigated from the holographic fringe patterns.     

迭代最小二乘法用于非线性移相器的标定

针对移相干涉仪中移相器的非线性会影响测量结果准确性的问题,提出了一种基于迭代最小二乘拟合的标定干涉仪移相器的新方法。对移相器加电压并采集若干幅干涉图后,通过在帧间和帧内迭代开展最小二乘拟合可计算出干涉图间移相值,从而得出了电压值与移相值的对应关系曲线,通过对曲线作非线性拟合并对电压值进行精密调整,完成移相器的精确标定。在改造后的干涉仪上对此标定方法进行验证,与Zygo干涉仪相比,相同元件下两者测量结果之差的RMS值为1.726 nm。该标定方法可以降低高精度面形测量干涉仪对移相器线性度的要求。     

Polarization phase-shifting Jamin shearing interferometer

The Jamin shearing interferometer is very useful in wavefront testing, especially for the low coherent light. Based on this interferometer, a polarization phase-shifting Jamin shearing interferometer is proposed to improve the performance. In the interferometer, two interference beams are linearly polarized and a polarization phase shifter is applied to realize the phase shifting. Different types of configurations of the interferometer are given. With phase-shifting interferograms, the precision of the interferometer can be improved. The interferometer is kept as an equal optical path system and its shearing amount remains changeable with simple structure and easy operation. In experiments, phase-shifting interferograms are obtained by rotating the analyzer. The usefulness of the interferometer is verified.     

A comparison of phase shifting and fourier methods in the analysis of discontinuous fringe patterns

Phase Shifting Interferometry is a highly accurate data acquisition technique that efficiently utilizes several frames of information for each measurement. In this work, the advantages of phase shifting have been applied to a conventional moiré interferometer, yielding a system capable of recording phase shifted fringe patterns for both in-plane displacement components. Using this method, the phase of a wavefront of interest can be determined at each detector location, so that the resolution of the phase measurements is limited primarily by the detector discrimination and geometry. Unlike traditional Fourier fringe analysis, the noise rejection of phase shift processing algorithms does not degrade image fidelity in the presence of edges and discontinuities. A general discussion of both the phase shifting technique and the Fourier fringe analysis method is included to provide insight into the problems of processing discontinuous fringe patterns.     

Common-path interferometer with a tri-window

A common-path interferometer is proposed with a tri-window. It is built using a 4f optical system with Ronchi ruling as a spatial filter. The input rectangular aperture is formed by three windows; the central window supports a phase object, and the other two are used for reference beams. Using an appropriate grating period relative to input aperture size, an interferogram containing three patterns can be obtained in the output plane. The object phase can then be reconstructed from the three patterns using just one interferogram. The experiments are carried out to demonstrate the feasibility and reliability of the proposed scheme.     

Atom interferometers manipulated through the toroidal trap realized by the interference patterns of Laguerre-Gaussian beams

In this paper, we proposed new constructions of atom interferometers manipulated through the toroidal trap formed by the interference patterns of two co-propagation Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beams. The coherent splitting and merging of the atomic ensemble, which is essential for the atom interferometer, is realized by the interference pattern of two LG beams. Along the beam propagation direction, a single-well trap is evolved into a double-well trap and then recombined back into a single-well trap, which can be used to form an atom interferometer.     

Characteristic polynomial theory of two-stage phase shifting algorithms

Two-stage phase shifting algorithms make possible to directly recover the sum or the difference of the optical phase of two different fringe patterns. These algorithms can be built by combining the known phase shifting algorithms in a non-linear way. In this work, we associate a two-dimensional characteristic polynomial to each two-stage phase shifting algorithm. This enables us to qualitatively compare their behaviour against the main systematic error sources, by means of an analysis protocol like that used for phase shifting algorithms. We show that this tool allows to understand the propagation of properties from precursor phase shifting algorithms to new evaluation algorithms built from them. As an experimental application, a wavefront distortion evaluation in differential phase-shifting interferometry is presented.     

Generation of collinearly propagating orthogonally polarized beams

A simple monolithic device for simultaneous generation of collinearly propagating orthogonally polarized light beams of equal intensity is presented. The common cube beam splitter masked by two linear polarizers is used to achieve the purpose. This is experimentally verified through the use of a Stoke's polarimeter. It is also shown experimentally that the same setup behaves as a polarization phase shifting interferometer.     

用于原子干涉仪的拉曼光的制备

原子干涉仪是利用原子物质波的特性而实现的干涉仪,广泛应用于精密测量领域.在原子干涉仪中,通过拉曼光对原子进行相干操作,拉曼光的质量直接影响着干涉仪的技术指标.基于注入锁定技术,采用普通半导体激光器、声光调制器,实现了功率、频率和位相稳定的拉曼光的制备,并对拉曼光的相位噪声技术指标进行了测试.     

菲索干涉仪中精确移相的实现

为了实现移相式菲索干涉仪对光学元件面形的高精度测量,建立了干涉仪同步采集移相系统,并对精确移相方法进行了研究。介绍了移相系统的构成和工作原理,计算了测量过程中移相器的速度。针对PZT移相器在移相过程中会引入离焦误差,并存在加速段和减速段的问题,详细设计了移相器的行进过程。最后,对移相器的性能进行了标定。在改造后的干涉仪上开展了重复性验证实验,结果表明：干涉仪可以获得λ/11 340的RMS测量重复性。对改造后干涉仪与Zygo公司生产的Verifire XP/D干涉仪的测量精度做了比对实验,结果显示：相同元件下两者测量结果的面形RMS之差约为0.9 nm,表明提出的移相系统及移相方法在重复性和准确度方面都能满足纳米级面形测量的要求,为研制高精度移相干涉仪奠定了基础。     

相干合成子光束一致性检测研究

分析了激光相干合成装置及其光路调整要求,提出利用剪切干涉检测合成光路中子光束一致性的方法。分析剪切干涉原理,建立了剪切板干涉物理模型,以相干合成中两路矩形光束拼接组束为例,数值模拟并研究了子光束的整体倾斜、离焦所对应的剪切干涉条纹,得到了条纹图像与子光束光轴误差、离焦误差之间的对应关系,用于相干合成光路中子光束光轴和发散角误差的判断。光轴倾斜大于5μrad时,可以直接观察互干涉和自干涉条纹变化,发散角在大于10μrad时,干涉条纹变化明显。此外,剪切干涉的自干涉条纹平移可用来检测子光束间的活塞误差,可作为光束拼接相干合成中闭环相位检测和控制的手段。     

Spatial-Variant Geometric Phase of Hybrid-Polarized Vector Optical Fields

We investigate a novel spatial geometric phase of hybrid-polarized vector fields consisting of linear, elliptical and circular polarizations by Young's two-slit interferometer instead of the widely used Mach-Zehnder interferometer.This spatial geometric phase can be manipulated by engineering the spatial configuration of hybrid polarizations,and is directly related to the topological charge, the local states of polarization and the rotational symmetry of hybrid-polarized vector optical fields. The unique feature of geometric phase has implications in quantum information science as well as other physical systems such as electron vortex beams.