We present two new devices that contain a lateral shear-plate interferometer, held in a mount that can be rotated about the centerline of the incident laser beam. This configuration ensures constant shear while allowing the shear orientation to be varied. One of these new systems relays the sheared image to a fixed video, 35 mm film, or other camera. With the proper camera, it can record the wavefront quality of optical systems of almost any wavelength. The other system holds a large, 150-mm-diameter shear plate in a light-weight structure that can be set on any of several surfaces. This instrument will shear a 100 mm dia. beam horizontally, vertically, and at +/- 45 degree(s). These tools allow quick and easy measurement of the defocus, and third order spherical aberration, coma, and astigmatism in a system without computerized data reduction. The accuracy is about a quarter of a wave.

Date Published: 5 February 1993
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 1755, Interferometry: Techniques and Analysis, (5 February 1993); doi: 10.1117/12.140757

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1755:
Interferometry: Techniques and Analysis
Gordon M. Brown; Osuk Y. Kwon; Malgorzata Kujawinska; Graeme T. Reid, Editor(s)