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Phase-shifting interferometry based on the lateral displacement of the light

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Article in Optics Express · July 2013

DOI: 10.1364/OE.21.017228

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 Phase-shifting interferometry based on
the lateral displacement of the light
source
Carlos Robledo-Sanchez, Rigoberto Juarez-Salazar,∗ Cruz
Meneses-Fabian, Fermin Guerrero-Sánchez, L. M. Arévalo Aguilar,
Gustavo Rodriguez-Zurita, and Viridiana Ixba-Santos
Facultad de Ciencias Fı́sico-Matemáticas, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla,
Apdo. Postal 1152 Ciudad Universitaria, 72000, Puebla, México
∗ rjuarezsalazar@gmail.com

Abstract: A simple and inexpensive optical setup to phase-shifting inter-

ferometry is proposed. This optical setup is based on the Twyman-Green
Interferometer where the phase shift is induced by the lateral displacement
of the point laser source. A theoretical explanation of the induced phase by
this alternative method is given. The experimental results are consistent with
the theoretical expectations. Both, the phase shift and the wrapped phase
are recovered by a generalized phase-shifting algorithm from two or more
interferograms with arbitrary and unknown phase shift. The experimental
and theoretical results show the feasibility of this unused phase-shifting
technique.
© 2013 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (120.3180) Interferometry; (120.5050) Phase measurement; (120.3930) Metro-
logical instrumentation; (120.2650) Fringe analysis.

References and links

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4. A. Patil and P. Rastogi, “Approaches in generalized phase shifting interferometry,” Optics and Lasers in Engi-
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Engineering 51, 626–632 (2013).
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#190164 - $15.00 USD Received 7 May 2013; accepted 11 Jun 2013; published 11 Jul 2013
(C) 2013 OSA 15 July 2013 | Vol. 21, No. 14 | DOI:10.1364/OE.21.017228 | OPTICS EXPRESS 17228
 13. T. Pfeifer, R. Tutsch, J. Evertz, and G. Weres, “Generalized aspects of multiple-wavelength techniques in optical
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Lett. 36, 2417–2419 (2011).
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1. Introduction
Phase-Shifting Interferometry (PSI) has become a versatile powerful tool used widely in a
variety of precise optical measurement applications [1]. In contrast with the spatial carrier based
methods, PSI is especially attractive because it can ensure major sensitivity, higher accuracy,
and maximum spatial resolution of the calculated phase [2].
The principle of the PSI method is very simple, it consists of the following two steps: First,
an interferogram is recorded for each phase step induced to the reference beam. Second, the
acquired phase shifted interferograms are processed to obtain the wrapped phase distribution.
Note that, currently, it is not necessary to induce calibrated and regular phase-shifting because
the so called Generalized Phase-Shifting Interferometry (GPSI) algorithms can process phase
shifted interferograms with arbitrary and unknown phase steps [3, 4, 5]. This allows focusing
only on simplified critical optical setup issues; in particular, on the phase shifter technology.
The piezoelectric transducer (PZT) is the most common element applied as the phase shifter
in PSI techniques [6, 7, 8]. However, the piezoelectric devices are expensive elements and, ad-
ditionally, they require amplifiers and control systems. Another alternative phase shifter uses
liquid-crystal phase modulators [9], diffraction gratings [10], Bragg cells [11], polarizing ele-
ments [12], multiple wavelengths [13] or wavelength-shifting [14, 15], amplitude modulators
[16], among others. Unfortunately, these methods demand complex and delicate equipment. A
different approach exploits the environmental vibrations [17]; however, the computer process-
ing is time consuming.
In this work, a simple and inexpensive phase-shifting technique is proposed. This technique
is based on a phase shift induced by changing the angle of illumination into a plane parallel
interferometer [18]. This effect is exploited in the Twyman-Green Interferometer where a point
laser source is moved perpendicularly to the optical axis. It is worth mentioning that the con-
figuration proposed is different from inducing a tilt in the reference mirror (spatial carrier) or
shearing interference.
This paper is organized as follows: First, we describe the principle behind our technique.
Next, we present some experimental results that demonstrate the validity of the proposal. Fi-
nally, a conclusion is presented.

2. Principles of the phase-shifting by lateral source displacement

In this section the principles of the phase-shifting induction by a lateral displacement of the
light source is given. We explain and show the application of it using the Twyman-Green setup
for PSI.
A centered point laser source, in the configuration shown in Fig. 1(a), is usually employed
as the illumination system in the Twyman-Green Interferometer. Here, we consider the case
where the point source is laterally displaced an amount given by d = d d,ˆ where dˆ is a unit
vector perpendicular to the optical axis, as it is shown in Fig. 1(b). The spherical wavefront

#190164 - $15.00 USD Received 7 May 2013; accepted 11 Jun 2013; published 11 Jul 2013
(C) 2013 OSA 15 July 2013 | Vol. 21, No. 14 | DOI:10.1364/OE.21.017228 | OPTICS EXPRESS 17229
 ((a)) ( )
(b) (c) (d)
L L Mr OP Mr Mt
y
B( p1 ) p1
x r p /2
d p0
z f B(( p2 )
B B( p2 ) p2
BS Mt E ( p2 ) p
f f I ( p))
P
OP g D

Fig. 1. (a) Centered collimating system with a point source. (b) Tilted plane wavefront
obtained by a lateral source displacement. (c) Twyman-Green Interferometer illuminated
with a tilted plane wavefront. (d) Alternative representation of Fig. 1(c).

which reaches the input plane of the lens L is given by

 = A0
A(p, d) exp[ikr],
r

where p = (x, y) is a spatial variable with Cartesian components x and y, r = ||r|| = ||f +p − d||
(where ||·|| denoting the Euclidean norm) is the distance between the point source at the point p
in the input plane of the lens L, A0 is a real value amplitude, k = 2π /λ is the wavenumber, λ is
the wavelength, and i is the imaginary unit (i2 = −1). We consider the paraxial approximation
 as:
of A(p, d)   
 ≈ B0 exp i k p2 + d 2 − 2d · p ,
A(p, d) (1)
2f
where B0 = (A0 / f ) exp[ik f ] is a complex amplitude and p = ||p||. Due to the propagation
 left its quadratic phase term exp[ikp2 /(2 f )] out. Thus,
through the lens L, the amplitude A(p, d)
at the output plane of L we have the tilted plane wavefront:
  
 = B0 exp i k d 2 − 2d · p ,
B(p, d) (2)
2f
which has a direction of propagation given by
tan θ = −d/ f , (3)
with respect to the optical axis as it is shown in Fig. 1(b).
Now, the Twyman-Green Interferometer is illuminated with B(p, d)  as shown in Fig. 1(c) or,

equivalently, Fig. 1(d). It is not loss of generality to suppose that the collimated beam B(p, d)
in the output plane of lens L is at the plane of the mirror Mr because the additional constant
phase due to the propagation from L to Mr can be dropped. Thus, for the point p in the observa-
tion plane OP, we have the intensity I(p, d)  and
 due to the interference of the beams B(p2 , d)

B̃(p2 , d) as
I(p, d)  + B̃(p2 , d)|
 = |B(p2 , d)  2, (4)
 is the beam
with | · | denoting the module, as shown in Fig. 1(d), and where the beam B̃(p2 , d)

B(p1 , d) reflected from the test mirror, namely
 = B(p1 , d)
B̃(p2 , d)  exp[ikρ + iφ (p0 )], (5)
where the additional phase terms are associated with the length path ρ = 2D[1 + (d/ f )2 ]1/2 and
the test mirror’s aberrations φ (p0 ). Since p2 = p1 + σ , where σ = σ dˆ with σ = −2Dd/ f is a
translation, we can rewrite the beam B(p2 , d)  as

 = B(p1 + σ , d)
B(p2 , d)  = B(p1 , d)
 exp [−ikσ d/ f ] . (6)

#190164 - $15.00 USD Received 7 May 2013; accepted 11 Jun 2013; published 11 Jul 2013
(C) 2013 OSA 15 July 2013 | Vol. 21, No. 14 | DOI:10.1364/OE.21.017228 | OPTICS EXPRESS 17230
Considering the Eqs. (5), (6) and p0 = p −τ , and going through some algebraic operations, we
can rewrite the Eq. (4) as
 
I(p, d)  − δ (d) ,
 = 2a + 2a cos φ (p −τ (d)) (7)

where a = A20 / f 2 = |B(p1 )|2 , δ (d) = −kρ − kσ d/ f is the phase shift, and τ is an linear image
translation given by
 = −(g + D)d/
τ (d)  f. (8)
Substituting the variables ρ and σ in δ (d), and since d 2 / f 2  1, the phase shift δ (d) can be
approximated to
δ (d) ≈ Dk(d/ f )2 , (9)
where the constant offset phase −2Dk was omitted.
From Eq. (7) we can see that, when the magnitude of d changes, two effects appear simulta-
 The first one is the quadratic phase shift δ (d), given
neously in the interference intensity I(p, d).
by Eq. (9). The second one is the linear translation τ , given by Eq. (8), of the fringe-pattern.
Both effects are depicted in Fig. 2.

F rame0

Phase shi
F rame1
F rame2
F rame3 Displacement

1 F rame4
2 F rame5
3 F rame6
Translaon

Displacement 6

Fig. 2. The fringe-pattern translation and the phase-shifting effects induced by the lateral
source displacement.

It is worth mentioning that the phase shifter sensibility can be tuned by the relative distance
D. For example, for a lateral source displacement of 2 mm, a lens with f = 0.5 m, and a laser
source with λ = 633 nm; we can obtain a phase shift of 2π rad if the distance D is set to
δ f 2 /(kd 2 ) = 3.96 cm. If more phase shift gain is required, a greater distance D is need and
vice versa.
The Eq. (9) and its application for phase-shifting interferometry is the main result of this
paper. It predicts a phase shift by changing the location of the source which to the best of our
knowledge has not been previously considered. In the next section we are going to give the
experimental results which show the feasibility of this principle.

3. Optical experiment
The feasibility of this proposal is experimentally verified as follows. We consider the standard
Twyman-Green Interferometer arrangement. The light source used was a He–Ne laser, with
wavelength λ = 633 nm. The laser beam was expanded and filtered by a microscope objective
and a pinhole, respectively. The pinhole was located at the focal point of a collimating lens with
focal length of f = 0.5 m.

#190164 - $15.00 USD Received 7 May 2013; accepted 11 Jun 2013; published 11 Jul 2013
(C) 2013 OSA 15 July 2013 | Vol. 21, No. 14 | DOI:10.1364/OE.21.017228 | OPTICS EXPRESS 17231
 The collimated wavefront obtained was split by a non-polarizing cube beamsplitter. Two
beams were produced and they were reflected by the reference Mr and test Mt mirrors. The test
mirror surface was deformed in order to obtain a distorted wavefront. The fringe pattern due
to the interference of these two reflected beams was observed on a screen on the observation
plane OP. The fringe patterns was acquired by a gray-scale 8-bit CCD camera with a resolution
of 768 × 1008 pixels.
The lateral source displacement was performed by mounting the laser source, the microscope
objective and the pinhole on a manual linear translation stage. The displacement resolution
reached with this mechanism is of 10 μ m. We considered a lateral source displacement of
d = ±2 mm with steps of 100 μ m. We choose the relative distance D = 3.96 and 7.91 cm
between the mirrors in order to obtain a phase shift δ (2 mm) = 2π and 4π rad, respectively.
The observation plane is placed to the distance g = 11 cm from the reference mirror Mr . For
each progressive displacement step, a phase shifted interferogram was recorded. Thus, for each
value of D, 41 interferograms were acquired. Of these interferograms, we show two adjacent
interferograms in Fig. 3 as an example.

(a) (b) (c)

200 200 200

400 400 400
600 600 600

200 400 600 800 1000 200 400 600 800 1000 200 400 600 800 1000

Fig. 3. (a) and (b) Two adjacent phase shifted interferograms acquired with the proposed
PSI technique. (c) Wrapped phase distribution recovered by processing the two interfero-
grams shown in Figs. 3(a) and 3(b) with the suggested GPSI algorithm.

The interferograms were processed with the GPSI algorithm reported in [5]. The calculated
phase shift and the image translation are shown in Figs. 4(a) and 4(b), respectively. The obtained
experimental data values presents a mean error of 0.06 rad (with standard deviation of 0.10
rad) for the phase shift, and 1.31 μ m (with standard deviation of 11.42 μ m) for the image
translation. These results are good considering that the displacement is induced manually.
−4
(a) x 10 (b)
4pi
Phase shift [Radians]

Model Model
7pi/2 5
Translation [m]

Experimental Experimental
3pi
5pi/2 ↑ D = 3.96 cm
2pi 0
D = 7.91 cm −−→
3pi/2
D = 3.96 cm −−−−→
pi −5
pi/2 ← D = 7.91 cm
0
−2 −1 0 1 2 −2 −1 0 1 2
Displacement [m] −3 Displacement [m] −3
x 10 x 10

Fig. 4. (a) Phase shift and (b) image translation measurements versus lateral source dis-
placement. This experiments correspond to the relative distances between the mirrors of
(red) D = 3.96 cm, and (blue) D = 7.91 cm.

Both the nonlinear phase shift and its deviation from the nominal values are not a problem
because an appropriate GPSI algorithm can be implemented. In this work, we used the GPSI

#190164 - $15.00 USD Received 7 May 2013; accepted 11 Jun 2013; published 11 Jul 2013
(C) 2013 OSA 15 July 2013 | Vol. 21, No. 14 | DOI:10.1364/OE.21.017228 | OPTICS EXPRESS 17232
 algorithm by parameter estimation [5]. Thereby, only two interferograms with an arbitrary and
unknown phase shift are sufficient to phase demodulation. For example, the results obtained
with this algorithm when it processes the two interferograms shown in Figs. 3(a) and 3(b) are:
a phase step of 0.898 rad, and the wrapped phase distribution shown in Fig. 3(c).
With respect to the image translation issue, it is very small (in the described experiment,
τ = 37.82 and 29.92 μ m for D = 7.91 and 3.96 cm, respectively). In addition, a scaling of
this translation is performed by the camera’s imaging system. In our particular case, the size
of the interferograms was of 3 × 3.9 cm and the target’s size of 2.7 × 3.5 mm. Thus, the image
translation is reduced to 3.4 and 2.7 μ m for D = 7.91 and 3.96 cm, respectively. But, since
the pixel size is 3.5 μ m, such translations are not observable. Moreover, for large translations,
because the translation is a linear function of the displacement, the numerical correction is very
simple and consists of a translation of all the pixels of the interferogram by a certain number of
pixels.

4. Conclusion
A simple and inexpensive phase shifter by lateral source displacement to phase-shifting in-
terferometry was proposed. Unlike the conventional PZT techniques, where fine nanometric
translations are required, in this novel technique a coarse and miscalibrated translation stage
obtained with a micrometric screw is sufficient. The phase shifter sensibility can be tuned by
the optical path difference between the interferometer’s mirrors.
Some phase shift problems such as the quadratic phase shift, miscalibration, and other un-
known possible error sources are overcome by an appropriate Generalized Phase-Shifting Inter-
ferometry (GPSI) algorithm to phase demodulation. In this work, the automatic real-time GPSI
algorithm by parameter estimation was used.
The translation of the interferogram image can be easily numerically corrected by a simple
pixels shift. Even, the translation effect can be negligible by either setting the relative distance
between the mirrors or adjusting the camera’s image amplification.
A successful implementation of this technique in the Twyman-Green Interferometer was
reported. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme is a simple and inexpensive
alternative to interferometrical phase evaluation. We believe that other interferometric systems
could incorporates this approach.

Acknowledgements
This work was partially supported by VIEP-BUAP. R. Juarez-Salazar and V. Ixba-Santos appre-
ciate the scholarship from Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologı́a, México and PROMEP.
Authors thank N. Keranen for her advice on wording.

#190164 - $15.00 USD Received 7 May 2013; accepted 11 Jun 2013; published 11 Jul 2013
(C) 2013 OSA 15 July 2013 | Vol. 21, No. 14 | DOI:10.1364/OE.21.017228 | OPTICS EXPRESS 17233

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