Two-shot common-path phase-shifting interferometer with a four-step algorithm and an unknown phase shift

Appl Opt. 2014 Apr 1;53(10):2067-72. doi: 10.1364/AO.53.002067.

Abstract

This paper presents a two-shot common-path phase-shifting interferometer that consists of a 4f optical system with two windows in the input plane and a Ronchi grating in the Fourier plane, and generates two adjacent interferograms using only diffraction orders 0 and +1 and 0 and -1. Four phase-shifted interferograms can be obtained in two shots by modulating two linear polarizers with angle difference of π/4 and translating the grating with only an unknown phase shift. An algorithm similar to the standard four-step algorithm is used to retrieve the phase of a specimen, and it requires no knowledge of the phase shift introduced by translation of the grating. The validity and repeatability of the proposed method is proved through simulations and experiments.