High-precision spherical subaperture stitching interferometry based on digital holography

Abstract A novel subaperture stitching interferometry is proposed to measure the high-numerical-aperture sphericity for workshop testing, which combined digital holographic technology, subaperture stitching algorithm and systemic aberration calibration. Each subaperture is fleetly measured by the digital off-axis holography with a single shot so that the influence of measurement environment can be effectively reduced. The high-precision full aperture shape is obtained by stitching these subapertures, meanwhile, the subaperture alignment errors and the systemic aberration can be correctly compensated by the method of least-squares with the Zernike polynomial fitting. The approach is verified by testing three spherical surfaces, including a concave sphere, a convex sphere, and a hemisphere, in general environment. Moreover, the measurement results are compared with full aperture results by using a large aperture interferometer of Zygo and stitching result by using a subaperture stitching interferometer of QED. The results based on the proposed approach are consistent with the commercial interferometers. Specifically, the relative deviations of RMS are 0.009 λ and 0.02 λ for testing a concave and a convex spheres, and that is 0.011 λ for testing a hemisphere. Our method not only has the comparable measurement accuracy with the commercial interferometers but also is more robust, feasibility and inexpensive than other subaperture stitching interferometry. We provide an anti-interference way to test spherical surfaces in workshop environment.