Wire grid polarizer based in-line laser interferometer for macroscopic and microscopic phase estimation of transmissive and reflective phase samples

Abstract

This work describes a full-field and near-common-path in-line laser interferometer and interferometric microscope utilizing a wire-grid polarizer (WGP) placed normally on the laser beam illuminating the sample. The WGP serves the dual purpose of a beam splitter and a polarization separator where the reference and sample beams reflected and transmitted from it respectively are orthogonally polarized so that, unlike other conventional interferometers, polarization phase shifting is inherent in its architecture. This arrangement presents experimental results showing quantitative phase analysis of transparent and reflecting phase samples

Radial shearing interferometry with in-built polarization phase shifting for three-dimensional imaging and quantitative phase analysis of transparent phase objects in macro and microscopic order

“…Using this very stable and rugged optical arrangement, where the counterpropagating beams in the triangular path cyclic interferometer are rendered orthogonally polarized by the inherent property of the WGP, polarization phase shifting (PPS) can be easily implemented. The author already proposed a similar PPS technique in the different setups for different applications [30][31][32][33] . This setup generated phase imaging for transparent macroscopic and microscopic phase objects with acceptably good fidelity.…”

Efficient infrared nine-channel reflective polarization-dependent splitter

“…Beam splitter have a crucial role in various optical systems that can be widely used in the design of optical components [1][2][3][4], such as sensors [5,6], interferometers [7][8][9], photonic crystal [10][11][12][13][14], and optical communication [15][16][17][18][19], etc. Reflective beam splitter is an important type of beam splitter [20][21][22].…”