Ultrastable Holographic Cyclic Interferometer

Abstract

ABSTRACT We propose to use an off-axis zone plate, as beam splitter and as beam recombiner, to set a cyclic interferometer. We show that this optical device can be tuned to generate, with high stability, cosinusoidal gratings and/or cosinusoidal zone plates. 1. INTRODUCTION Several modern optical devices incorporate holographically generated optical elements; either for substituting conventional optical elements, or for introducing novel techniques for manipulating light.In particular, in the field of interferometry there are attemps to use diffracting ele­ ments for testing large optics; without using large beam splitters1^.The aim of this work is to suggest, and to experimentally verify, the use of an off-axis zone plate for substituting the traditional beam splitter in a cyclic interferometer. We show that cosinusoidal gratings, and/or cosinusoidal zone plates, can be generated, easily and in a highly stable manner, with the cyclic interferometer.In section 2, we describe the geometries for recording and for reconstructing the holo­ graphically generated zone plate. In section 3, we discuss the use of the zone plate, as beam splitter and as beam recombiner, in a cyclic interferometer. Finally, in section 4, we present some cosinusoidal gratings, and some cosinusoidal zone plates generated by using our proposed setup.