Multiplication method for sparse interferometric fringes

Opt Express. 2016 Apr 4;24(7):7693-702. doi: 10.1364/OE.24.007693.

Abstract

Fringe analysis in the interferometry has been of long-standing interest to the academic community. However, the process of sparse fringe is always a headache in the measurement, especially when the specimen is very small. Through theoretical derivation and experimental measurements, our work demonstrates a new method for fringe multiplication. Theoretically, arbitrary integral-multiple fringe multiplication can be acquired by using the interferogram phase as the parameter. We simulate digital images accordingly and find that not only the skeleton lines of the multiplied fringe are very convenient to extract, but also the main frequency of which can be easily separated from the DC component. Meanwhile, the experimental results have a good agreement with the theoretic ones in a validation using the classical photoelasticity.