Study on Polarization Phase Shifting Interferometry with Quarter Wave Plate Different from Monitoring Wavelength

Abstract

Polarization Phase Shifting Interferometry is a relatively new technique in which phase shifted interferogram are generated using polarization optics. The presented interferometer is providing a easy learning on phase shifting interferometer with not so accurate components making realization of setup easy and leaning phase distribution. The present study introduce a novel polarization phase-shifting interferometer that acquires four phase-shifted fringe patterns without stringent requirement of thickness of quarter wave plate (QWP) to be exactly quarter wave at that wavelength of the Laser source used with the experiment which is reported for the first time. In this study interferometer is in a Twyman-Green configuration and the interference pattern were acquired with a Charged Coupled Device (CCD) camera using LabVIEW IMAQ interface and processed with MATLAB. Concept of Jones matrix is applied to evaluate effects of changes in phase calculation due to non-exact quarter wave plate. The experimental results showing the 2-D phase and its spatial variations are also presented