Exact wave-front reconstruction from two lateral shearing interferograms

Abstract

A new method is presented for the reconstruction of a one-dimensional wave front on the basis of difference measurements from two shearing interferograms. The proposed algorithm reconstructs any wave front exactly up to an arbitrary constant. The method is not restricted to small shears. However, the shearing parameters have to be chosen such that certain constraints are satisfied. A procedure for determining such shearing parameters is given. In addition, it is shown that the procedure is stable with respect to noise introduced into the differences.