Virtual interferometer calibration method of a non-null interferometer for freeform surface measurements.

Non-null interferometry is a prospective method for aspheric and freeform surface measurements because of its potential versatility over null interferometry. Due to the existence of the retrace error, non-null testing usually has the drawbacks of low accuracy and inconvenient alignment of the surface under test (SUT). In this paper, a calibration method for freeform SUT in a non-null interferometer is introduced. This method calibrates the position and attitude of the SUT in a virtual interferometer with an optimization algorithm, and no accurate adjustment mechanism is required to adjust the SUT in the real interferometer. An application of this method in the digital moire interferometric technique (DMIT) is presented. The retrace error and the influence of the alignment error can be removed after calibration. Experimental results indicate that with this calibration method, the DMIT can achieve a measurement repeatability of λ/20 (PV) when the freeform SUT has obvious alignment error. This is adequate for most aspheric and freeform surface measurements, especially when the vibration cannot be isolated completely and the freeform SUT is not easy to align.