Abstract

Fringe formation in the two-grating interferometer is analyzed in the presence of a small parallelism error between the diffraction gratings assumed in the direction of grating shear. Our analysis shows that with partially coherent illumination, fringe contrast in the interference plane is reduced in the presence of nonzero grating tilt with the effect proportional to the grating tilt angle and the grating spatial frequencies. Our analysis also shows that for a given angle between the gratings there is an angle between the final grating and the interference plane that optimizes fringe contrast across the field.

© 2008 Optical Society of America

Sawtooth profile fringes with a two-grating interferometer

Hsuan Chen, Robert R. Hershey, and Emmett N. Leith
Appl. Opt. 27(6) 1193-1198 (1988)

Effects of unparallel grating planes in Talbot interferometry. II

Qian Liu, Ryoji Ohba, and Seiichi Kakuma
Appl. Opt. 39(13) 2084-2090 (2000)

Measurement of two-dimensional small angle deviation with a prism interferometer

Sanjib Chatterjee and Y. Pavan Kumar
Appl. Opt. 47(27) 4900-4906 (2008)

Analysis of Two-Tilt Compensating Interferometers*†

Anthony J. Montgomery
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 57(9) 1121-1124 (1967)

Fringe formation with a cross-grating interferometer

Yih-Shyang Cheng
Appl. Opt. 25(22) 4185-4191 (1986)