Mirrors for high performance optical systems are manufactured with ultra-precision lathes. Measurements on this machine are necessary for the precise processing of mirror shape. A lateral shearing interferometer is a kind of common type of path interferometer, which is little affected by mechanical vibrations and air turbulence. In the lateral shearing interferometer, interferograms are produced by the optical path difference between a wave front under testing and a laterally sheared wave front. Therefore, the interferograms produced by a lateral shearing interferometer show a contour map of the difference of the wave front under test in the direction of the shear. The contour map must be analyzed to reconstruct the wave front under testing, because the contour map does not directly show the wave front. Many analysis methods for this reconstruction process have been proposed for lateral shearing interferograms.
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