Parallel-quadrature on-axis phase-shifting common-path interferometer using a polarizing beam splitter.

Abstract

A common-path parallel-quadrature on-axis phase-shifting interferometry using a modified Michelson configuration with a polarizing cube beam splitter is proposed for quantitative phase measurement. The frequency spectrum of the circularly polarized object beam is split into two beams using a beam splitter. One beam is converted to a 45° linearly polarized beam to act as the object beam, and the other beam is low-filtered by a pinhole mirror to act as the reference beam. Two interferograms with quadrature phase shift can be simultaneously captured by combining the 45° linearly polarized object beam with the circularly polarized reference beam through a 45° tilted polarizing cube beam splitter, and the phase of a specimen can be then retrieved through a two-step phase-shifting algorithm. Experiments are carried out to demonstrate the validity and stability of the proposed method.