INTERFEROMETRIC METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SPATIO-TEMPORAL OPTICAL COHERENCE MODULATION

摘要

The invention relates to applications of optical interference. It is already known to reduce speckle contrast by introducing arbitrary phase shifts in the reference light beam. According to the invention, such phase shifts are not introduced arbitrarily, but systematically whereby the phase changes are synchronised with the acquisition time intervals in such a way that interference fringes can be washed out in selected regions of the beam diameter maintaining high contrast of interference fringes in the desired regions at the same time. This technique can be used for enhancing the lateral resolution in imaging techniques and the bandwidth in optical communications.