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RADIAL, ROTATIONAL & REVERSAL SHEAR INTERFEROMETRY

RADIAL SHEAR INTERFEROMETRY

It produces two interfering identical wavefronts but one of the wavefronts is contracted or
expanded with respect to the other.

ROTATIONAL SHEAR INTERFEROMETRY

It produces two identical wavefronts with one of them rotated with respect to the other.

REVERSAL SHEAR INTERFEROMETER

It produces two wavefronts in which deformations on one wavefront are symmetric with
respect to those on the other wavefront with a diameter as axis of symmetry.
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RADIAL SHEAR INTERFEROMETER

It provides information of shear in all the direction and not only in one direction unlike
lateral shear interoferometer.

 It’s result is simpler to interpret.

 It’s lower sensitivity makes it ideal for testing wavefront with a high degree of
sphericity because no. of fringes is small.

It is based on Mach-Zehnder interferometer using telescopic systems on each arm. The

effective radial shear is given by 1/M2 where, M is magnification of each telescope.

[d1 = same size as incident collimated wave and d2 < d1 and radial shear is reduced and is 1/M2]

OR RADIAL SHEARING INTERFEROMETRY

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ROTATIONAL SHEAR INTERFEROMETRY

In rotational shear interferometry two identical wavefronts are made to interfere but one of
them is rotated with respect to the other by a certain angle about their common optical axis.
They are useful in evaluating non-symmetric aberrations like coma and astigmatism.

One Dove prism is rotated by an angle  to produce rotation of wavefront by an angle 2 

. To isolate asymmetric components, the wavefront is made to interface with an image of
itself that is identical but is rotated by 180◦ (i.e.  = 90◦) in order to obtain difference between
them.

To isolate symmetric components, the wavefront is rotated 180◦ and then passed again
through optical system under test, in order to duplicate symmetric error and to eliminate
asymmetrical ones. Then the wavefront is made to interfere with an unaberrated wavefront.

(a) REVERSAL SHEAR INTERFEROMETER

It uses TWO 30-60-90 prism (Two Abbe Prisms showing constant Deviation). Tilting of mirror
under test provides a control of separations of interference fringes.