Multiple beam Fizeau interferometer with filtered frequency comb illumination

Real wedge interferometers of the Fizeau-type do not allow for fringes in case of a spectral broadband source – or in short: for white light fringes. Here, the use of a suitable frequency comb source will help to overcome this limitation on the one hand and on the other will offer the capability for enhanced phase sensitivity in high precision measurements of surface deviations. Frequency combs can be produced either by using a pulse train from a fs-laser or by passive filtering of the light emitted by a broadband source as a superlum-diode or a fs-laser. The frequency comb produced by a common fs-laser is extremely fine, i.e., the frequency difference of consecutive peaks is very small or the distance of consecutive pulses of the pulse train might be of the order of 1 m. Therefore, the pulse train produced by passive filtering of a broadband source is better adapted to the needs of surface testing interferometers. White light fringes are either applied for the profiling of discontinuous surfaces and/or can serve as an indication for the correct choice of multiplication factors in superposition interferometry. During the last decennium it became more and more clear that spatially incoherent sources provide better measuring accuracy in surface measurements due to the reduced influence of dust diffraction patterns. The advantage of laser illumination can nevertheless be maintained if the laser light is made spatially incoherent through moving scatterers in the light path. Here, we will discuss the application of spatially incoherent broadband light frequency filtered through a Fabry–Perot filter. The main applications are in the following fields: (1) surface profiling applications using two-beam Fizeau interferometers, (2) selection of single cavities out of a series of interlaced cavities, and (3) sensitivity enhancement for multi-beam interferometers for planeness or sphericity measurements. Some of the discussed possibilities will be experimentally demonstrated.