Physics Commons^™

Quantitative Data Extraction Using Spatial Fourier Transform In Inversion Shear Interferometer, Yanzeng Li

Graduate Theses - Physics and Optical Engineering

Currently there are many interferometers used for testing wavefront, measuring the quality of optical elements, and detecting refractive index changes in a certain medium. Each interferometer has been constructed for a specific objective. Inversion shear interferometer is one of them. Compared to other interferometers, it has its own advantages, such as only being sensitive to coma aberration, but it has some limitations as well. It does not allow use of phase shifting technique. A novel inversion shear interferometer was invented using holographic lenses. By using the spatial carrier method, phase information of the wavefront was extracted. The breakthrough of the …

Performance Comparison Of Shearing Interferometer And Hartmann Wave Front Sensors, Timothy L. Pennington

Theses and Dissertations

The resolution of optical imaging systems is severely degraded from the diffraction limit by the random effects of the atmosphere. Techniques exist to compensate for the atmospheric turbulence, one of which is adaptive optics. A critical component in the adaptive optics system is the wavefront sensor. Presently, two types of sensors are being used-the Hartmann-Shack Wavefront Sensor and the Shearing Interferometer. Previous studies have compared these two sensors and found them to perform identically for a point source. However, to date, no comparison has been performed for an extended source and subaperture spacing larger than the correlation length of the …

Far Infrared Fourier Transform Spectroscopy Using Ring Interferometer, Changqing Qiu

Theses

A circular mirror interferometer named ring interferometer, which was designed by Dr. K.D. Moller, was built and set up for far-infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy. The ring interferometer has ten circular mirrors with the same area. By applying Fraunhofer diffraction theory, the calculation shows that the ring interferometer will have large diffraction angle range compared with lamellar grating interferometer which has rectangular mirrors with same width. Therefore the ring interferometer will be more efficient than lamellar grating in far-infrared spectroscopy. The experimental results show that this ring interferometer will work as expected.

In addition, a "home made" helium cooled detector was …

Laser Phase Front Measurements Using A Phase Conjugate Twyman-Green Interferometer, William J. Mandeville

Theses and Dissertations

This study demonstrated the use of a phase conjugate TwymanGreen interferometer for measuring the phase fronts of beams emitted by infrared diode lasers operating at 830 nm. This interferometer successfully measured the phase front of a single element diode laser, providing better resolution than its conventional counterpart. The phase conjugate mirror compensated for aberrations introduced by imperfect optics in the phase conjugating arm of the interferometer. This interferometer was unable to measure the phase front of a diode array due to the array's inability to create a phase conjugate return. The array's short coherence length is believed to be the …