We demonstrate the generation of an optical dipole wave suitable for the process of efficiently coupling single quanta of light and matter in free space. We employ a parabolic mirror for the conversion of a transverse beam mode to a focused dipole wave and show the required spatial and temporal shaping of the mode incident onto the mirror. The results include a proof of principle correction of the parabolic mirror's aberrations. For the application of exciting an atom with a single photon pulse we demonstrate the creation of a suitable temporal pulse envelope. We infer coupling strengths of 89% and success probabilities of up to 87% for the application of exciting a single atom for the current experimental parameters.The final publication is available at www.epj.org.
A simple algorithm for blind extraction of phase shifts is proposed for generalized phase-shifting interferometry from only three interferograms. Based on the statistical property of the object wave, the algorithm calculates approximately the involved phase shifts as initial values. The extraction is further improved by an iterative method, considering the fact that the closer the phase shifts approach their real values, the more uniform the reconstructed reference wave will become. The feasibility of this algorithm is demonstrated by both simulation and experiment.
We report on interferometric characterization of a deep parabolic mirror with a depth of more than five times its focal length. The interferometer is of Fizeau type; its core consists of the mirror itself, a spherical null element, and a reference flat. Because of the extreme solid angle produced by the paraboloid, the alignment of the setup appears to be very critical and needs auxiliary systems for control. Aberrations caused by misalignments are removed via fitting of suitable functionals provided by means of ray tracing simulations. It turns out that the usual misalignment approximations fail under these extreme conditions.
Parallel two-step phase-shifting point-diffraction interferometry for microscopy based on a pair of cube beamsplitters is proposed. The first 45°-tilted cube beamsplitter splits object wave into two parallel copies: one copy is filtered by a pinhole in its Fourier plane to behave as reference wave, while the other one remains unchanged as object wave. The second cube beamsplitter combines the object and reference waves, and then split them together into two beams. Along with the two beams, two parallel phase-shifting interferograms are obtained in aid of polarization elements. Based on the proposed configuration, slightly-off-axis interferometry for microscopy is performed, which suppresses dc term by subtracting the two phase-shifting holograms from each other. The setup is highly stable due to its common-path configuration, and has been demonstrated to be suitable for measuring moving objects or dynamic processes.
A new common-path and in-line point-diffraction interferometer for quantitative phase microscopy is proposed. The interferometer is constructed by introducing a grating pair into the point-diffraction interferometer, thus forming a common-path and in-line configuration for object and reference waves. Achromatic phase shifting is implemented by linearly moving one of the two gratings in its grating vector direction. The feasibility of the proposed configuration is demonstrated by theoretical analysis and experiments.
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