2.1 Virtual interferometer technique
With the goal of performing surface metrology in mind, we first consider a typical interferometric profilometer shown in
Fig. 1
. In this system, an object under test and a reference object (assumed to be a flat mirror) are imaged onto a CCD camera in order to generate fringes, which result from the difference in surface shape between the object under test and the reference object. Given an algorithm for accurately unwrapping the phase information contained in the fringe pattern, this technique is capable of determining the surface shape of the object under test directly from the measured data; the results are obviously limited by the flatness of the reference object, the sensitivity of the camera, and the stability of the interferometer.
Fig. 1 An interferometric approach for surface metrology. (a) Experimental layout. (b) Example fringe pattern measured by camera.
If we use a wavefront sensor in place of the camera, as shown in
Fig. 2
, we can treat the system as a
virtual interferometer (VI), where each arm is measured separately and the results are combined to reveal the surface shape by calculating the wavefront difference. Again, the final result is limited by the quality of the optical path and the reference object.
Fig. 2 A virtual-interferometric approach for surface metrology. (a) Experimental layout, in which the wavefront from each arm is measured separately, and the results are subtracted to determine the surface shape of the object under test. (b) Example wavefront difference calculated from individually measured wavefronts.
We are able to obtain surface shape information with either the CCD or VI methods; however, we see that there are two limitations common to both approaches. First, the optical paths for each arm must be identical or exactly known, requiring precise characterization of the reference optic. Second, both approaches require an extra arm to be built into existing systems, which may be inconvenient or impossible due to efficiency or space requirements. We now present a system without these limitations. Consider an alternative single-arm virtual-interferometric (SAVI) approach, shown in
Fig. 3
, in which the reference arm has been removed. The idea is to measure the surface profile of the object under test using an approach similar to shearing interferometry.
Fig. 3 A single-arm virtual-interferometric approach for surface metrology: F1 and F2 are the focal lengths of lenses arranged in a 4f-imaging configuration, used to image the surface of the object under test onto the wavefront sensor.
By displacing the object between measurements, we can determine the surface gradient of the object along the direction of displacement (
Fig. 4
), and thus extract accurate information about the surface. This single-arm approach eliminates the two key disadvantages of the two-arm approaches, i.e., the need for and uncertainty from additional reference optics. Instead, this approach requires only the wavefront sensor and imaging system, as well as the capability to laterally displace the object under test. These components are quite standard, e.g., in adaptive-optic measurement systems. In fact, wavefront sensing has become a vital resource for many applications, most commonly as feedback in AO systems [
5
S. Bonora, I. Capraro, L. Poletto, M. Romanin, C. Trestino, and P. Villoresi, “Wave front active control by a digital-signal-processor-driven deformable membrane mirror,” Rev. Sci. Instrum.
77(9), 093102 (2006). [CrossRef]
,
6
F. Gonté, A. Courteville, and R. Dändliker, “Optimization of a single-mode fiber coupling efficiency with an adaptive membrane mirror,” Opt. Eng.
41(5), 1073–1076 (2002). [CrossRef]
]. Wavefront flatness, for example, can be used as feedback for optimizing laser focusing and single-mode fiber coupling [
5
S. Bonora, I. Capraro, L. Poletto, M. Romanin, C. Trestino, and P. Villoresi, “Wave front active control by a digital-signal-processor-driven deformable membrane mirror,” Rev. Sci. Instrum.
77(9), 093102 (2006). [CrossRef]
,
7T. Weyrauch, M. A. Vorontsov, J. W. Gowens II, and T. G. Bifano, “Fiber coupling with adaptive optics for free-space optical communication,” in Proc. of SPIE 4489, 177–184 (2002).
], while total wavefront knowledge is required for other applications such as the generation and characterization of Zernike aberrations [
8
L. Zhu, P.-C. Sun, D.-U. Bartsch, W. R. Freeman, and Y. Fainman, “Wave-front generation of Zernike polynomial modes with a micromachined membrane deformable mirror,” Appl. Opt.
38(28), 6019–6026 (1999). [CrossRef]
]. The built-in nature of the SAVI technique may enable and/or incentivize its use in particular applications where it may be currently impossible or impractical to include reference optics
Fig. 4 Displaced-object wavefront measurements. (a) Initial position. (b) Displaced horizontally. (c) Difference between (a) and (b), which corresponds to the gradient of a spherical surface along the direction of displacement.
2.2 Gradient reconstruction
After determining the phase gradient using our SAVI technique, a mathematical integration process is used to reconstruct the surface shape from the measured gradients. The reconstruction algorithm must be tolerant to noisy or invalid data. For example, missing data points (shown as white space in the left corners of the gradient data in
Fig. 5
) can arise from low illumination or clipping along the beam path. Such errors render straightforward integration ineffective, due to the undetermined contribution missing data would make to the cumulative sum along a given row or column during integration.
Fig. 5 Experimental gradient reconstruction data for a deformable mirror approximating a trefoil shape. (a) Horizontal gradient. (b) Vertical gradient. (c) Reconstructed surface.
Noisy gradient data can arise from a number of potential sources: actuator displacement and crosstalk errors can each cause mechanical inaccuracy, while instability can be introduced by the movement of any optic within the system between measurements. Additionally, the wavefront sensor may introduce several types of noise, though these errors are device dependent. For example, a Shack-Hartmann sensor may have static and dynamic calibration errors, as well as noise from the CCD array used to measure the slope values. The static calibration errors contribute to the background wavefront removed during the gradient calculation, while the dynamic calibration errors are included in the specification for the wavefront sensor resolution. We decided to implement a best-fit approach designed to minimize the impact of uncorrelated noise, such as the CCD noise; we also include a few preliminary steps to address particular problems with other types of errors.
Since the overall system resolution depends on each step of the reconstruction process, it is important to consider the effect of each source of error in order to adequately address each during reconstruction. As discussed below, we use an iterative, least-squares, best-fit algorithm that produces the “best” surface for a given set of gradient measurements. This approach ignores invalid data and reduces the impact of local slope errors, i.e., the random variations of a single data point, although it does not address errors that impact multiple data points in a correlated manner. Mechanical errors, which result in a displacement or tilt of the entire measured wavefront, must therefore be dealt with separately from the fitting algorithm. Since both the actuator resolution and lateral crosstalk for our XYZ translation stage are significantly less than the spatial resolution of the wavefront sensor (that is, less than 1-μm displacement error compared to 150-μm pixel spacing), and we average each measurement over several trials, we can ignore these errors. However, with a higher-resolution wavefront sensor or larger lateral displacement errors, this assumption may not be justified.
In addition to the lateral crosstalk errors, another form of mechanical error is angular crosstalk, which takes the form of tilts about the XYZ axes of the translation stage as a result of displacement along any particular axis. Although these errors are usually quite small, angular crosstalk has a cumulative impact on the reconstruction error due to the integrative nature of the gradient reconstruction process. For example, we have observed repeatable crosstalk tilts on the order of 50 μrad for the typical displacements in our system. This corresponds to a predictable, linearly varying error on the order of 0.5 μm over a 20-mm aperture, which is added to the gradient data. If left unchecked, this error would accumulate during reconstruction and imply a false curvature along each axis with a peak-to-valley amplitude of 2.5 μm, or roughly the same as a 20-m spherical mirror! Given the predictable nature of the crosstalk, we opted to measure and remove the tilt bias for each displacement, effectively reducing the 50-μrad tilts to less than 2 μrad. This approach is limited by the tilt measurement accuracy, and is discussed in more detail in Section 4.
After removing all global errors, we can move forward with the gradient reconstruction process. Building on the similarities between this technique and shearing interferometry, we have chosen a modified version of the shearing-interferometer reconstruction process detailed by Southwell in [
9
W. Southwell, “Wave-front estimation from wave-front slope measurements,” J. Opt. Soc. Am. A
70(8), 998–1006 (1980). [CrossRef]
], supplemented with a few additional steps. To begin, we subtract off a few low-order surface shapes that can be calculated directly from the gradient data in a robust manner; they will be added back in at the end of the iterative reconstruction. This initial step lets us quickly isolate the lowest-spatial-frequency and typically largest-amplitude components from the gradient data. The low spatial-frequency components are the most problematic for our algorithm since it only considers a few local data points at a time; thus, removing the low-order terms ahead of time can greatly improve the performance of the iterative fitting step. We subtract several low-order terms,
C, from the measured gradients,
, via projection onto a finite basis of known gradients,
A, as shown in
Eqs. (1-
3):
refer to the horizontal and vertical gradients of five Zernike terms: tilt (horizontal and vertical), astigmatism (horizontal and diagonal), and focus. We have chosen to subtract the tilt, astigmatism, and focus terms, since each can be readily expressed in terms of Zernike or Legendre polynomials, depending on the system aperture. The resulting set of coefficients, C, is saved so we can add the terms back into the surface data later; the resulting reduced amplitudes of the updated gradients, and , help to improve the speed and accuracy of the best-fit algorithm. If the system aperture is not exactly circular or rectangular, the chosen basis functions may not be orthogonal over the given aperture. To work around slightly non-orthogonal basis functions, we apply this projection term-by-term over a few cycles. By subtracting the calculated amplitude for each term from the gradient data before evaluating the overlap with the next term, we iteratively project the residual slopes onto the basis functions, which generally converge to a fixed set of coefficients after several iterations. This approach allows us to avoid having to ignore data or continually adjust the basis functions in order to maintain orthogonality.
Next, we use Southwell’s algorithm to calculate the best-fit surface shape from the residual gradients calculated in the previous steps. Other than using surface gradients rather than wavefront slopes, the iterative process is identical to the original implementation. The algorithm calculates an initial array of local surface deviations,
, for each pair of indices,
j and
k, using the surrounding horizontal and vertical gradient values. Using these local surface deviations as a fixed reference, the algorithm then updates the i
th current surface estimate,
, using an iteratively updated local average,
, and the fixed local deviation, which sum to the actual surface value once converged. Also, each term is weighted by
,
, or
in order to handle missing or invalid data points. More specifically,
indicates whether the current indices refer to a valid point,
is the inverse of the total number of valid points considered in the phase-average calculation, and
depends on the desired algorithm behavior for calculating local deviations at the aperture border and around invalid data points. This process is summarized in
Eqs. (4-
6):
Once the iterative best-fit step is complete, we again subtract off several low-order surface shapes from the residual surface estimate. Since the low-order terms were removed before reconstruction, we know that any terms which are present after the reconstruction are erroneous artifacts of the reconstruction algorithm itself and should be ignored. Finally, we add the correct low-order terms back onto the reconstructed surface shape, and apply a scaling factor determined by whether the object is reflective or transmissive: for reflective objects, the angle of reflection is twice the actual value of the surface normal angle, while for transmissive objects this scale factor is 1.