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Laser phase noise reduction for industrial interferometric applications.

Laser ultrasound is a technique used for the ultrasonic inspection of composites during manufacturing of advanced jet fighters. With this technique laser interferometry is used to detect ultrasonic displacements generated by a laser. In theory, the signal-to-noise ratio is proportional to the square root of the collected detection light. In practice, laser phase noise limits the signal-to-noise ratio above a certain collected light level. Two techniques are presented to decrease effects due to laser noise. In one technique the dual-cavity Fabry-Perot currently used is replaced by an interferometer based on a photorefractive crystal. The other technique has a high-finesse Sagnac cavity that filters the phase noise from the detection laser. Experimental results demonstrate that these two techniques significantly reduce limitations due to laser noise.

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Disturbance-free distributed Bragg reflector laser-diode interferometer with a double sinusoidal phase-modulating technique for measurement of absolute distance.

A new range-finding technique that uses both double sinusoidal phase modulation and quasi-two-wavelength interferometry is described. Two independent interference signals are generated with respect to two different wavelengths on a time-sharing basis. We clarify that external disturbances of these interference signals are eliminated by both feedback control and differential detection and that the feedback control does not affect the distance measurement. A single distributed Bragg reflector laser diode allows us to simplify the optical setup and to improve the measurement accuracy. After discussing a measurement range, we estimate a measurement error by making several measurements.

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Three-dimensional deformation measurement from the combination of in-plane and out-of-plane electronic speckle pattern interferometers.

An optical setup that can be switched to produce in-plane and out-of-plane sensitivity interferometers was designed for three-dimensional deformation measuring by electronic speckle pattern interferometry. Divergent illumination is considered in the evaluation of sensitivity vectors to measure both in-plane and out-of-plane displacement components. The combination of these interferometers presents the advantage of greater sensitivity in directions u, v, and w than a typical interferometer with three illumination beams provides. The system and its basic operation are described, and results with an elastic target that is exposed to a mechanical load are reported.

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Precision ranger for measuring large mechanical components.

We present a precision laser ranger system for the measurement of large manufactured components and structures. The system was developed based on a beat-wave interferometry principle. The light source of this system is a frequency-stabilized laser with a frequency stability of 1 x 10(-7) (in open air) or 10(-8) (in the laboratory). The laser operates in two longitudinal modes, and the two modes are generated in common resonator; therefore the two beams are naturally coaxial. The precision ranger system does not need a long guide or any heavy machinery. In this system an adaptive filter and a wavelet-transform program are used to improve the measurement accuracy. The system described here has a measuring range of 0-20 m and a measuring uncertainty of 30 microm/10 m.

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Signal modeling for low-coherence height-scanning interference microscopy.

We propose a computationally efficient theoretical model for low-coherence interferometric profilers that measure surface heights by scanning the optical path difference of the interferometer. The model incorporates both geometric and spectral effects by means of an incoherent superposition of ray bundles through the interferometer spanning a range of wavelengths, incident angles, and pupil plane coordinates. This superposition sum is efficiently performed in the frequency domain, followed by a Fourier transform to generate the desired simulated interference signal. Example applications include white-light interferometry, high-numerical-aperture microscopy with a near-monochromatic light source, and interference microscopy for thickness and topography analysis of thin-film structures and other complex surface features.

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Phase calibration of spatially nonuniform spatial light modulators.

A new 512 x 512 pixel phase-only spatial light modulator (SLM) has been found to deviate from being flat by several wavelengths. Also, the retardation of the SLM relative to voltage varies across the device by as much as 0.25 wavelength. The birefringence of each pixel as a function of address voltage is measured from the intensity of the SLM between crossed polarizers. To these responses are added a reference spatial phase measured by phase shifting interferometry for a single address voltage. Fits to the measured data facilitate the compensation of the SLM to a root-mean-square wave-front error of 0.06 wavelength. The application of these corrections to flatten the full aperture of the SLM sharpens the focal plane spot and reduces the distortion of computer-designed diffraction patterns.

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Wavelet analysis of speckle patterns with a temporal carrier.

A novel temporal phase-analysis technique that is based on wavelet analysis and a temporal carrier is presented. To measure displacement on a vibrating object by using electronic speckle pattern interferometry, one captures a series of speckle patterns, using a high-speed CCD camera. To avoid ambiguity in phase estimation, a temporal carrier is generated by a piezoelectric transducer stage in the reference beam of the interferometer. The intensity variation of each pixel on recorded images is then analyzed along the time axis by a robust mathematical tool, i.e., a complex Morlet wavelet transform. After the temporal carrier is removed, the absolute displacement of a vibrating object is obtained without the need for temporal or spatial phase unwrapping. The results obtained by a wavelet transform are compared with those from a temporal Fourier transform.

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Phase retrieval with a three-frame phase-shifting algorithm with an unknown phase shift.

A three-frame phase-shifting algorithm with a constant but unknown phase shift is proposed. The algorithm is based on background-intensity removal prior to phase retrieval to eliminate an undetermined factor in a fringe pattern. The proposed method is validated on three-dimensional profilometry by fringe projection and on deformation measurement by means of digital speckle shearing interferometry. For a fringe pattern with slow-varying background intensity, the background removal is achieved in the frequency domain. For a speckle pattern, a background removal technique is integrated with the three-frame algorithm. In this process, manual intervention is minimal, and high computational speed is achieved. In addition, high-frequency phase signals would not be removed in the noise-reduction process as is the case in the bandpass-filtering technique. Accuracy of the method is discussed.

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Nanometric position and displacement measurement of the six degrees of freedom by means of a patterned surface element.

A method is presented for position and displacement measurements of the six degrees of freedom by use of a patterned surface element observed by a static interferometric vision system. The surface element is made of a regular pattern of circular holes etched on a chromium layer deposited onto a flat glass plate. The in-plane coordinates (x, y, theta(z)) are reconstructed with a subpixel resolution by a vision method based on phase measurements. The out-of-plane coordinates (z, theta(x), theta(y)) are reconstructed by phase-shifting interferometry. Resolutions achieved by the proposed method are in the range of microradians for the measurement of angles and of nanometers for the position and displacement.

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Subsurface damage in some single crystalline optical materials.

We present a nondestructive method for estimating the depth of subsurface damage (SSD) in some single crystalline optical materials (silicon, lithium niobate, calcium fluoride, magnesium fluoride, and sapphire); the method is established by correlating surface microroughness measurements, specifically, the peak-to-valley (p-v) microroughness, to the depth of SSD found by a novel destructive method. Previous methods for directly determining the depth of SSD may be insufficient when applied to single crystals that are very soft or very hard. Our novel destructive technique uses magnetorheological finishing to polish spots onto a ground surface. We find that p-v surface microroughness, appropriately scaled, gives an upper bound to SSD. Our data suggest that SSD in the single crystalline optical materials included in our study (deterministically microground, lapped, and sawed) is always less than 1.4 times the p-v surface microroughness found by white-light interferometry. We also discuss another way of estimating SSD based on the abrasive size used.

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Regularized phase tracker with isophase scanning strategy for analysis of dynamic interferograms of nonwetting droplets under excitation.

The surface of a nonwetting droplet is separated from a solid surface by a continuous supply of a lubricating gas film within the apparent contact region. Under certain conditions, e.g., application of an external excitation force, the gas film thickness can decrease to a level where intermolecular forces cause the droplet to wet the surface. The thickness of the lubricating film can be measured by interferometry. Externally imposed oscillations change the shape of the film, leading to dynamic interference fringes that are recorded with a high-speed CCD camera. We propose a spatiotemporal analysis of the interference patterns based on the regularized phase-tracker method. This well-known method minimizes a cost function to estimate the absolute phase of a single element in the interferogram. A proper scanning method along all elements of the interferogram is necessary to avoid phase estimation errors that will propagate throughout the entire continuous phase image of interest. The scanning method we propose traces along contours of constant phase in the interferogram and does not require segmentation of the interferogram in dark and bright fringes. Results in the form of dynamic height profiles of droplets under excitation obtained by this method are presented.

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Adaptive correction to the speckle correlation fringes by using a twisted-nematic liquid-crystal display.

An innovative technique for reducing speckle noise and improving the intensity profile of the speckle correlation fringes is presented. The method is based on reducing the range of the modulation intensity values of the speckle interference pattern. After the fringe pattern is corrected adaptively at each pixel, a simple morphological filtering of the fringes is sufficient to obtain smoothed fringes. The concept is presented both analytically and by simulation by using computer-generated speckle patterns. The experimental verification is performed by using an amplitude-only spatial light modulator (SLM) in a conventional electronic speckle pattern interferometry setup. The optical arrangement for tuning a commercially available LCD array for amplitude-only behavior is described. The method of feedback to the LCD SLM to modulate the intensity of the reference beam in order to reduce the modulation intensity values is explained, and the resulting fringe pattern and increase in the signal-to-noise ratio are discussed.

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White-light interferometer with dispersion: an accurate fiber-optic sensor for the measurement of distance.

We present a fiber-optical sensor for distance measurement of smooth and rough surfaces that is based on white-light interferometry; the sensor measures the distance from the sample surface to the sensor head. Because white light is used, the measurement is absolute. The measurement uncertainty depends not on the aperture of the optical system but only on the properties of the rough surface and is commonly approximately 1 microm. The measurement range is approximately 1 mm. The sensor includes no mechanical moving parts; mechanical movement is replaced by the spectral decomposition of light at the interferometer output. The absence of mechanical moving parts enables a high measuring rate to be reached.

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Effect of thermal annealing on the optical properties and residual stress of TiO2 films produced by ion-assisted deposition.

The effects of thermal annealing of titanium oxide films deposited by ion-beam assistance at annealing temperatures from 100 degrees C to 300 degrees C on the residual stress and optical properties of the films was investigated. The refractive indices and extinction coefficients increased gradually as the temperature was increased from 100 degrees C to 200 degrees C and then declined gradually as the temperature was increased further from 200 degrees C to 300 degrees C. The film lost oxygen and slowly generated lower suboxides as the annealing temperature was reduced below 200 degrees C, as determined by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). As the annealing temperature increased above 200 degrees C, the lower suboxides began to capture oxygen and form stable oxides. XPS measurements were made to verify both the binding energy associated with the Ti 2p line and the variation of the O 1s line. A Twyman-Green interferometer was employed for phase-shift interferometry to study the residual stress. The residual stress declined as the temperature was reduced from 100 degrees C to 200 degrees C because the lower suboxides reduced the stress in the film. Above 200 degrees C, the film began to capture oxygen, so the residual stress rose. At 300 degrees C, the film was no longer amorphous as the anatase was observed by x-ray diffraction.

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Percussion hole drilling of metals with a fourth-harmonic Nd:YAG laser studied by defocused laser speckle correlation.

Defocused speckle correlation is introduced as a tool for measuring the response in metal sheets during percussion laser drilling. For this procedure the fourth-harmonic Nd:YAG wavelength (266 nm) was used in pulsed mode. The method provides a cost-efficient and robust alternative to speckle interferometry for the study of the small deformations that appear during laser processing. The accuracy was shown to be of the order of a few tens of microradians for the tilt component that is measured, which translates to a few nanometers in deflection when the component is spatially integrated. In the measurements, deflections in the form of craters as large as 50 nm were detected on the back sides of silver and copper sheets. The diameters of the craters were 300 microm in the silver and 150 microm in the copper sheet; the output diameter of the hole was -5 microm.

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Imaging in diffuse media with pulsed-ultrasound-modulated light and the photorefractive effect.

Acousto-optic imaging in diffuse media is a dual wave-sensing technique in which an acoustic field interacts with multiply scattered laser light. The acoustic field causes a phase modulation in the optical field emanating from the interaction region, and this phase-modulated optical field carries with it information about the local optomechanical properties of the media. We report on the use of a pulsed ultrasound transducer to modulate the optical field and the use of a photorefractive-crystal-based interferometry system to detect ultrasound-modulated light. The use of short pulses of focused ultrasound allows for a one-dimensional acousto-optic image to be obtained along the transducer axis from a single, time-averaged acousto-optic signal. The axial and lateral resolutions of the system are controlled by the spatial pulse length and width of the ultrasound beam, respectively. In addition, scanning the ultrasound transducer in one dimension yields two-dimensional images of optical inhomogeneities buried in turbid media.

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