Advancements in the Interferometric Measurements of Real Time Finishing Birefringent Filter's Crystal Plates

摘要

The finishing of birefringent plates consists of two processes: polishing and evaluation of a surface, which have been performed separately till now. The purpose of this work is achieving of high accuracy of the evaluation and machining of the plane-parallel plates from birefringent crystals, in particular of crystal plates of birefringent filters during their finish-ing.The developed process combines evaluation and polishing in an interactive way. We have found modes of treatment, shape of polisher, have designed interferometer, with a mirror arranged in polisher. Visual checking of optical thickness comparatively with reference plate was carried out using the interference fringes of equal birefringence, and checking of an optical wedge-by interference rings of an equal inclination. The automated processing of TV camera interference fringes was impossible, because of gaps of interference fringes on polishing cells above the mirror. Therefore a special software was developed for processing of a complex fringe pattern interferogram. Software Fastlnterf uses furrier analysis technique which allows to process an interferogram with multiply gaps. Interferograms are registered by a high resolution TV camera (1280×1024). Automatic processing of a fringe interferogram using Fastlnterf software takes less then one second. The influence of gaps is excluded, and the flat field is taken into account. Software provides full 3D surface and wavefront maps. Aberration analysis of a wavefront gives information on thickness of a plate comparatively with a reference one, optical wedge of plate and azimuth of an inclination of wave front. Moreover, software provides a control of surface quality. The measuring device, features of the software are described and process of interferometric evaluation during polishing is illustrated.