Polarization Phase-shifting Cyclic Jamin Shearing Interferometer

In the inter-satellite laser communication, the laser beam transmitted from the optical terminals is required to be highly collimated and its divergence approaches diffraction-limit. For testing the diffraction-limit wavefront, a polarization phase-shifting cyclic Jamin shearing interferometer is proposed. It is composed of a Jamin plate with a PBS film coated on its front surface, a right-angle prism reflecting beams two times, a shearing plate shearing beams by its rotation and a polarization phase shifter. The laser beam to be test is incident on the Jamin plate and gives rise to two interference beams with mutually perpendicular polarization directions by the PBS film. The two beams falls on the right-angle prism before or after passing through the shearing plate. With reflection of the right-angle prism, a cyclic Jamin shearing interferometric light path is formed. Two emitted beams go into the polarization phase shifter to obtain phase-shifting interferograms. In this interferometer, the cyclic interferometric light path can eliminate error of the surface profile of the optical element and the effect of environment. The interferometer has polarization phase shifting function and its fringe visibility is high. Therefore the interferometer can obtain high accuracy with variable shearing amount. In experiments, phase-shifting interferograms are obtained and the usefulness of the interferometer is verified.