Applications of Interferometers

Some applications of the devices using interference are described below.

Various multipurpose high-performance products have been commercialized as laser and laser application technologies continue to advance. When replacing components or expanding your facilities, perhaps you have issues you would like to address involving product functionality or compatibility with existing equipment.

Sigma Koki proposes the system best suited to a given application, budget, and delivery period, based on our long experience supplying devices and facilities for research, measurements, and evaluation to customers in a wide range of fields, including research organizations, as well as our extensive know-how with these products accumulated over time.

Zone plate interferometer

• A product in which a zone plate is combined with an interferometer to enable measurement of surface shapes; for example, of concave mirrors within the accuracy of a wavelength of light.
• The zone plate is a glass substrate on which concentric light and dark rings are drawn. When introduced to this zone plate, light is split into transmitted light and a diffracted (converging or diverging) light. When these lights are reflected from a sample surface and superimposed, light and dark interference fringes appear.
• This is a common-path interferometer with greater resistance to external disturbances such as vibration and air flow, since the reference and measurement light have the same optical path.
• Preparing an appropriate zone plate for a sample allows measurement of mirrors with various radii of curvature. The torus of the zone plate can be determined by computer calculations, enabling measurements of spherical and aspherical surfaces?previously a task that presented significant difficulties.

Microinterferometer

• A Mach-Zehnder interferometer in an A4-size package; suitable for integration within devices.
• Features extremely small wave front fluctuations, thanks to reductions in entire device dimensions made possible by a post system and adoption of a high-accuracy mirror (profile regularity: λ/20) to bend the optical path.
• The CCD detector unit is compatible with narrower light beams.
• All components are standard catalogue products, allowing easy modification and system maintenance.