Interferometer for Monitoring Convex Hyperbolic Surfaces of Small Diameters

Abstract

We used Fourier transforms to perform a theoretical analysis of how the process of interference pattern formation in a laboratory-scale Fizeau laser interferometer is affected by the error in the working wave front. The interferometer is designed to monitor convex hyperbolic surfaces characterised by small diameters and low aperture angles. We indicate their application scope. The interferometer consists of a laser illuminator, a microlens, a beam splitter, that is, a thin plane-parallel plate with a semitransparent coating on its front surface, and a screen. A thin translucent plate located perpendicular to the line connecting the geometric foci of the hyperbolic surface acts as a separator and a reference simultaneously. The paper provides the main equations describing the wave aberration of the working branch and the position of optical elements in the interferometer design. We present an example of computing aberration in the working branch of the interferometer. This calculation reveals that aberrations in the thin plane-parallel plate can be discarded at low aperture angles. The interferometer forms a high-precision optical surface map, that is, interference band distortion caused by the interferometer error does not exceed 0.1 of the distortion caused by the error inherent to the surface being monitored. The interferometer provides highly accurate measurement of hyperbolic surfaces while featuring an obviously simple design