Measurement of the optical thickness of a layered object from interference colors in white-light microscopy

Abstract

Regular features in generating coloured interference patterns from single-layer thin objects in polychromatic optical microscopy are considered. Expressions for the intensity distribution of the image interference fields are obtained with due account for the spectral properties of radiation. The proposed algorithm for computer-aided calculation and generation of coloured interference patterns in white light depending on the optical thickness of the layered object is based on a RGB colour model. Numerically simulated interference patterns are presented and changes in their colour and structure under varying parameters of the microscope optical scheme and object optical properties are discussed. We show that it is possible to determine the optical thickness of the object layer through the numerical comparison of interference colours obtained in the natural and numerical experiments.