One–shot phase stepping with a pulsed laser and modulation of polarization: application to speckle interferometry

Abstract

For applications involving time varying optical phase distributions, fast cameras and/or pulsed lasers have to be used. To apply phase-shifting interferometry techniques (PSI) as well, single shot capture is required. Among others, modulation of polarization and phase grating interferometry is a possible technique to be considered. In this paper, a report about the use of this technique based on a double pulse laser system is presented. Single-pulse and twin-pulse operations are considered both in optical interferometers as well as in ESPI systems (mainly in subtraction mode). In ESPI a reduction of the degree of polarization appears due to scattering, so some measures have to be taken to prevent such deletereous effect. To show the feasibility of the proposed variants some experimental results are presented.