Phase-shifting with translation ruling in common-path interferometer: characterization and experimental results

An experimental setup for phase extraction of two-dimensional phase distributions is presented. The system uses a common-path interferometer consisting of two windows in the input plane and a translating grating as its pupil. In the output, interference of the fields associated with replicated windows is achieved by a proper choice of the windows spacing with respect to the grating period. Because in this type of grating interferometer a grating is placed as a spatial filter, the phase changes which are needed for phase-shifting interferometry can be easily performed with translations of the grating driven by a linear actuator. Some experimental results are shown.