Three Gaussian beam heterodyne interferometer for surface profiling

A novel three Gaussian beam interferometric technique for profiling optical smooth surfaces is presented. The technique is based on the heterodinization of three Gaussian beams, two of them with the same temporal frequency. The first beam is used as a probe beam after being focused and reflected from the surface under test. The second beam is reflected from a reference surface. The third beam is obtained from the first diffraction order of a Bragg cell and thus, it is shifted in its temporal frequency. The three beams are coherently added at the sensitive plane of a photodetector that integrates the overall intensity of the beams. We show analytically that the electrical signal at the output of the photodetector consists of a temporal carrier whose amplitude is a sinusoidal function of the local topography. We include the measurement of the topography of a sample consisting in a blazed-reflecting grating calibrated by means of an atomic force microscope.