We propose the application of nitroanisole as a two-dimensional detector for infrared (IR) phase-shifting interferometry. The nitroanisole that is utilized in our experiment is liquid at room temperature and it has significant thermal lens effect, i.e. the refractive index for visible light is dependent on temperature. In addition, we verified by infrared absorption spectroscopy that the nitroanisole has an absorption band around 10.6μm in the IR region. Therefore, the interference fringe pattern that is generated on the nitroanisole by the IR beams may be treated as a phase grating for visible light. A Fresnel diffraction pattern made by visible laser light that is transmitted through the phase grating, i.e. the nitroanisole, can be observed as a superposition of the intensities corresponding to the profile of the phase grating and its harmonic components. Additionally, in response to a shift of the interference fringe on the nitroanisole, the Fresnel diffraction pattern on the observation plane also shifts by an equal amount. Utilizing this characteristic of nitroanisole, we attempted to estimate the IR phase map by applying the phase-shifting method to the diffraction patterns. We conducted an experiment aimed to measure the angle of a wedge of ZnSe, which is an IR transmitting material, and we confirmed the feasibility of obtaining phase measurements in the IR region by this procedure.

Date Published: 6 December 2005
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 6049, Optomechatronic Sensors and Instrumentation, 60490O (6 December 2005); doi: 10.1117/12.642732

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6049:
Optomechatronic Sensors and Instrumentation
Yasuhiro Takaya, Editor(s)