Reflective point-diffraction microscopic interferometer with long-term stability

An on-axis phase-shifting reflective point-diffraction microscopic interferometer for quantitative phase microscopy based on Michelson architecture is proposed.A cube beamsplitter splits the object wave spectrum into two copies within two arms.Reference wave is rebuilt in one arm by low-pass filtering on the object wave frequency spectrum with a pinhole-mask mirror,and interferes with the object wave from the other arm.Polarization phase-shifting is performed and phase imaging on microscale specimens is implemented.The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme has the advantage of long-term stability due to its quasi common-path geometry with full use of laser energy.