Stitching interferometry: recent results and absolute calibration

Stitching Interferometry is a method of analysing large optical components using a standard "small" interferometer. This result is obtained by taking multiple overlapping images of the large component, and numerically "stitching" these sub-apertures together. We have already reported the industrial use our Stitching Interferometry systems (Previous SPIE symposia), but experimental results had been lacking because this technique is still new, and users needed to get accustomed to it before producing reliable measurements. We now have more results. We will report user comments and show new, unpublished results. We will discuss sources of error, and show how some of these can be reduced to arbitrarily small values. These will be discussed in some detail. We conclude with a few graphical examples of absolute measurements performed by us.