Measurement of radius of curvature of spherical optical surfaces with small curvature and aperture by optical profiler

Abstract

Monochromatic energy multilayer Kirkpatrick-Baez microscope is one of key diagnostic tools for researches on inertial confinement fusion. It is composed by two orthogonal concave spherical mirrors with small curvature and aperture, and produce the image of an object by collecting X-rays in each orthogonal direction, independently. Accurate measurement of radius of curvature of concave spherical mirrors is very important to achieve its design optical properties including imaging quality, optical throughput and energy resolution. However, it is difficult to measure the radius of curvature of spherical optical surfaces with small curvature and aperture by conventional methods, for the produced reflective intensity of glass is too low to correctly test. In this paper, we propose an improved measuring method of optical profiler to accomplish accurate measurement of radius of curvature of spherical optical surfaces with small curvature and aperture used in the monochromatic energy multilayer Kirkpatrick-Baez microscope. Firstly, we use a standard super-smooth optical flat to calibrate reference mirror before each experiment. Following, deviation of central position between measurement area and interference pattern is corrected by the theory of Newton’s rings, and the zero-order fringe position is derived from the principle of interference in which surface roughness has minimum values in the position of zero light path difference. Measured results by optical profiler show the low relative errors and high repeatability. Eventually, an imaging experiment of monochromatic energy multilayer Kirkpatrick-Baez microscope determines the measurement accuracy of radius of curvature.