Research on Optical Metrology for Complex Optical Surfaces with Focal Plane Wavefront Sensing.

Complex optical elements have the advantages of improving image quality and optical performance and expanding the field of view. Therefore, it is widely used in X-ray scientific devices, adaptive optical elements, high-energy laser systems, and other fields and is a hot research direction in precision optics. Especially for precision machining, there is a greater need for high-precision testing technology. However, how to measure complex surfaces efficiently and accurately is still an important research topic in optical metrology technology. In order to verify the ability of optical metrology for complex optical surfaces with wavefront sensing based on image information of the focal plane, some experiment platforms in different types of optical surfaces were set up. In order to validate the feasibility and validity of wavefront-sensing technology based on image information of focal planes, a large number of repetitive experiments were carried out. The measurement results with wavefront sensing based on image information of the focal plane were compared with the measurement results with the ZYGO interferometer. The experimental results demonstrate that good agreement is obtained among the error distribution, PV value, and RMS value of the ZYGO interferometer, which shows the feasibility and validity of wavefront sensing based on image information of focal plane technology in optical metrology for the complex optical surface.

Measurement of the Aspherical Optical Surfaces with the Improved Phase Retrieval.

In order to verify the estimated wave-front ability of the phase retrieval, a method utilized in the measurement of the aspherical optical surfaces using the phase retrieval technology is described. This technique is based on the algorithm as a solution for the measurement of the aspherical optical surfaces, whose principle is sampling a number of the given defocus images and obtaining the phase information by solving the wave-front with Fourier optical diffractive theory and mathematics optimization. We set up an experimental arrangement used to measure the aspherical optical surfaces using the improved phase retrieval. In addition, we introduced the method of optical alignment in detail, which is very important for high-precision measurements. We obtained an agreement among the error distributions, the peak value, and the root-mean-square value of a ZYGO interferometer, which demonstrates that the improved phase retrieval method can effectively estimate the wave-front and the aberrations of aspherical optical surfaces.

Measurement of Small-Slope Free-Form Optical Surfaces with the Modified Phase Retrieval.

In this paper, we demonstrate the use of the modified phase retrieval as a method for application in the measurement of small-slope free-form optical surfaces. This technique is a solution for the measurement of small-slope free-form optical surfaces, based on the modified phase retrieval algorithm, whose essence is that only two defocused images are needed to estimate the wave front with an accuracy similar to that of the traditional phase retrieval but with less image capturing and computation time. An experimental arrangement used to measure the small-slope free-form optical surfaces using the modified phase retrieval is described. The results of these experiments demonstrate that the modified phase retrieval method can achieve measurements comparable to those of the standard interferometer.

Analysis of spurious diffraction orders of computer-generated hologram in symmetric aspheric metrology.

Computer-generated hologram (CGH) has been widely used as a wavefront compensator in symmetric aspheric metrology. As a diffractive element, it generates different diffraction orders, but only the 1st-order diffraction is used to test aspheric surface. The light from spurious diffraction orders (SDO) will produce many high-frequency fringes in interferogram and reduce measurement accuracy. In this paper, we regard the CGH null system as an imaging system and develop an aberration model in Seidel formalism to analyze the SDO. This model has the advantage to address the difference between the SDO (k1, k2) and (k2, k1). We consider the effect of the pupil distortion so that our model can analyze the SDO with a large pupil distortion. We derive the condition to ensure the 2nd-order and 4th-order aberrations have the same sign and calculate the minimum defocused distance (power carrier frequency) of CGH. According to the marginal-ray heights (h1andh3) on the CGH in the first and second passes, we determine the condition that the SDO covers the whole CGH in the second pass. We analyze the SDO of 4 CGH designs and compare the results from our aberration model with these from real ray trace. These results validate that our aberration model is feasible whether the aspheric part is convex or concave and whether CGH is inside or outside the focus of the transmission sphere.