Error sources in phase-measuring interferometry (Invited Paper)

Phase-measurement interferometry (PMI) techniques enable quantitative measurements to be performed in optical testing, holographic interferometry, and speckle metrology. This paper presents the results of error analyses of the most common errors in phase-measurement techniques. These errors include miscalibrated and nonlinear phase shifters, detector nonlinearities, detection quantization, vibration and air turbulence, and frequency mixing. Simulations providing the magnitude and form of these errors are shown for a number of different phase-measurement algorithms.