Polarization and phase shifting interferometry for the simultaneous measurement of phase and polarization.

S. Rothau1, N. Lindlein
Institute of Optics , Information and Photonics, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg
sergej.rothau@fau.de
 
In several cases it is useful to characterize optical elements with respect to their impact on the polarization and the phase of an incoming light wave. However, this is not possible in one of the traditional measurement procedures. For the phase measurement the well established method of the phase shifting interferometry (PSI) can be used, but without measuring any polarization results. On the other side, the common polarization measurement methods provide no global phase information of the light wave.

We will present a theoretical description and some experimental results of a novel interferometric method for the simultaneous and spatially resolved measurement of both the phase and any local elliptical polarization.

The complete description of the light wave is achieved by the approach, that in the measurement setup in addition to the variation of the reference phase, like in the classical PSI, also the polarization of a reference beam is changed. For the minimal algorithm only six interferograms are sufficient to calculate all unknown variables.
Keywords:
Interferometry, Metrology
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117. Tagung, Vortrag: B19, Freitag 20.05.2016,B