Measurement of two-dimensional small angle deviation with a prism interferometer

Sanjib Chatterjee* and Y. Pavan Kumar

Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India, Indore-452013, India *Corresponding author: schat@cat.ernet.in Received 17 March 2008; revised 24 June 2008; accepted 3 August 2008; posted 5 August 2008 (Doc. ID 93972); published 15 September 2008

A new technique for the measurement of two-dimensional small angular deviation is presented. A compound prism, which effectively produces a combination of two right-angled prisms in orthogonal directions, and plane reference surfaces have been utilized for the measurement of the orthogonal components of the angular tilt of an incident plane wavefront. Each orthogonal component of the angular tilt is separately measured from the angular rotation of the resultant wedge fringes between two plane wavefronts generated due to splitting of the incident plane wavefront by the corresponding set of right-angled prism and plane reference surface. The technique is shown to have high sensitivity for the measurement of small angle deviation. A monolithic prism interferometer, which is practically insensitive to vibration, is also proposed. Results obtained for the measurement of a known tilt angle are presented. 2008 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 120.0120, 120.3180, 120.2650, 230.5480.

1. Introduction

Autocollimators are extensively used for the measurement of small angles. In conventional autocollimators, ultimate accuracy is set by the diffraction limit, and consequently a large beam size is needed for getting higher measurement accuracy. CCDbased high accuracy autocollimator systems have been reported by researchers [1,2]. Malacara et al. [3] proposed an interferometric method for measuring angular deviations over a large range. The device works by counting change in interference fringe order due to the variation of the optical path difference (OPD) between the collimated beams reflected from the two faces of a plane parallel glass plate as the plate undergoes angular rotations. It was shown in [4] that for the parallel plate technique, the lower limit (2) depends on the error in determination in the interference fringe order, and the upper limit is set by parallelism, surface flatness, and material homogeneity of the plate and the requirement
0003-6935/08/274900-07$15.00/0 2008 Optical Society of America 4900 APPLIED OPTICS / Vol. 47, No. 27 / 20 September 2008

of a very high optical quality parallel plate actually restricts the range of measurements to smaller angles. In Michelson interferometer (MI) based methods [57], the angular rotation is transformed to OPD variations by replacing the mirror (or mirrors) in one or both arms of the MI with a right-angled prism (RP) (or prisms) that actually undergoes (undergo) angular rotations. Setups using two prisms have better linearity and sensitivity compared to that with a single prism in one arm of the MI. Also, with two prisms, the position of the rotation axis does not affect the result. Shi et al. [8] presented a technique for improving the linearity of MI based methods by calculating the optimum position of the rotation axis with respect to the prism, while Ikram et al. [9] discussed the use of parallel plates in the ray path for accomplishing the same. Zheng et al. [10] discussed the disadvantages associated with the MI based setups using two RPs and reported a technique where separation between two parallel beams instead of between two RPs enters into the relationship between the OPD and the rotation angle. Huang et al. [11] and Huang and Ni [12] presented techniques based on the phenomenon of total

internal reflection (TIR) in which a large variation of the intensity of a laser beam occurs due to a small change in angle of incidence in the vicinity of critical angle. A differential detection scheme has been utilized to reduce the effect of the inherent nonlinearity of the reflection characteristics in TIR. As variation of phase difference between p- and s-polarized components in the vicinity of the critical angle can be measured much more accurately with heterodyne interferometry, the intensity measurements are replaced by phase difference measurements as reported in [13,14]. The pronounced variation of phase difference between p- and s-polarized light with small change in the angle of incidence in the resonance region of the surface plasmon excitation has been utilized for the measurement of small angles as discussed in [15,16]. The interferometric methods reported in [310] are more suitable for the measurement of relatively large angular displacements, while those based on the internal reflection effect [1116], fringe projection [17,18], and image projection techniques [19] are more useful for small angles. Optical vortex interferometers have been used for the measurement of angular displacement, as can be found in [2022]. Two-beam Fizeau fringes associated with an air wedge in Fizeau and Twyman & Green interferometers have been utilized by researchers for measurement of angular displacements as discussed in [23,24]. We describe a simple, highly sensitive technique for the measurement of small angular displacement using two-beam Fizeau-type fringes but unlike the other Fizeau and Twyman & Green interferometer based methods, the probe mirror is not a part of the interference cavity. A specialized prism design has been utilized for 2D small angle measurement. A monolithic prism interferometer is proposed.
2. Principle

are indicated by arrows. The collimated beam, which travels along the z-axis of the rectangular Cartesian coordinate system shown in Fig. 1, falls on a (4590) RP whose right-angle edge lies along the x-direction of the coordinate system, i.e., in a direction normal to the plane of the Fig. 1. (R2) represents reference plane surface of a master plate placed in the beam path. (A0 B0 ) is reflected plane wavefront due to Fresnel reflection of the portion (AB) of the incident plane wavefront ABC on R2 and (B0 C0 ) is that due to the TIR of the part (BC) of the incident plane wavefront ABC on the right-angle surfaces of the RP. (AT) represents an attenuator that attenuates the intensity of the internally reflected light through the RP to that of the Fresnel reflected component from R2 for improving interference contrast. By adjusting R2, a small air wedge of angle x is introduced between A0 B0 and B0 C0 along the x-direction. The corresponding straight Fizeau fringes resulting from the interference between A0 B0 and B0 C0 are along the y-direction with spacing given by d =x [25]. This is illustrated on the right-hand side of the Fig. 1, where the direction of the fringes is shown by (F1F10 ), which is along the y-direction, and the right-angle edge of the RP is along (OX). Suppose the incident parallel beam is given a small angular deviation (in the yz plane) as shown in Fig. 2. (A0 B0 C0 ) and (ABC) represent the initial and tilted plane wavefronts, respectively. It is evident that because of the two reflections on the right-angle surfaces of the RP, the reflected plane wavefront B0 C0 is always parallel to the incident wavefront BC and makes an angle 2 with the Fresnel reflected component A0 B0 of the incident plane wavefront from R2. Thus two orthogonal tilt components x and y 2 exist between the interfering plane wavefronts A0 B0 and B0 C0 . As can be seen in Fig. 3, the magnitude and direction of the resultant wedge are given by p x 2 y 2 ; 1 2

We consider Fig. 1 for explaining the principle of the present technique. (ABC) represents the plane wavefront corresponding to an expanded collimated beam from a HeNe laser source ( 632:8 nm). The beam expander, which consists of a microscope objective, spatial filter, and corrected telescope objective, and the laser source are not shown in Fig. 1. The ray paths and the directions of travel of the plane wavefronts

tan y =x :

The associated Fizeau fringes would be perpendicular to the resultant wedge direction as shown by

Fig. 1. Optical schematic showing the generation of interfering plane wavefronts with a RP (90; 45) and a plane reference surface.

Fig. 2. Optical schematic for explaining the principle of tilt measurement. 20 September 2008 / Vol. 47, No. 27 / APPLIED OPTICS 4901

Fig. 3. Resultant wedge and fringe direction for combinations of x and y . OA, OA, OB, and OB represent the resultant wedge directions for the orthogonal pairs (x ; y ), (x ; y ), (x ; y ), and (x ; y ), respectively. F 1 F 1 0 indicates the fringe direction for (x ; y ), and (x ; y ). F 2 F 2 0 shows the fringe direction for (x ; y ), and (x ; y ).

F1F10 on the right side of Fig. 2. Thus by measuring from the orientation of the resultant fringe direction and using the known value of x, it is possible to determine the magnitude and direction of y from Eq. (2). We may consider the positive direction of wedge to be from lower to higher thickness. Figure 3 shows the directions of the resultant wedges and that of the associated Fizeau fringes for possible directions of x and y . OA, OA0 , OB, and OB0 show the resultant wedge directions for the combinations (x ; y ), (x ; y ) (x ; y ), and (x ; y ), respectively. It is evident from Eq. (2) and also illustrated in Fig. 3 that for the same signs of x and y , irrespective of whether they are positive or negative, the direction of the resultant fringes, shown by (F1F10 ) in Fig. 3, would be the same. Again the direction of the resultant fringes, shown by (F2F20 ) would be similar when they are of different signs. Therefore, from the direction of the resultant fringe pattern, it is possible to know whether x and y are of the same sign or different. Thus the sign or direction of y can be found from the known direction of x. Reversal and inversion of the fringe image produced due to the imaging lens and mirror reflection are to be considered while determining the direction of the unknown tilt. Substituting y 2 and x =d, where d is the initial fringe spacing, i.e., the separation between the consecutive bright and dark fringes, in Eq. (2) and rearranging, we get tan =2 d: 3

It is evident that the RP based optical configuration discussed so far is capable of measuring the angular tilt of the incident wavefront only for the directions perpendicular to the right-angle edge of the RP, i.e., along the y-direction for the setup discussed. The tilt of the incident wavefront in the orthogonal direction does not alter the Fizeau fringes, as both the interfering plane wavefronts suffer identical angular deviation. Thus for measuring a wavefront tilt (a ) in any arbitrary direction, we need to measure its orthogonal components (x ) and (y ) by carrying out independent measurements in orthogonal directions. A compound prism (CP), shown in Fig. 4, has been designed for simultaneously measuring the tilt components of the incident wavefront in the orthogonal directions. Figure 5 illustrates the functioning of the CP, which is basically a combination of RPs as shown by (H1H2H3H4) and (V1V2V3V4) in orthogonal directions. For simplicity we denote H1H2H3H4 and V1V2V3V4 by (H) and (V), respectively. Figure 5 shows the ray paths for the incident collimated beam inside the CP. The total internally reflected beams from the CP are parallel to the incident beam but travel in the 180 opposite direction. The reference surfaces are indicated by R1 and R2. The part of the incident plane wavefront that follows the ray path (CC1A1A) undergoes two reflections on the right-angle surfaces of H and emerges along A1A and is made to interfere with the Fresnel reflected component of the incident wavefront falling on R2. The angular orientation of R2 is adjusted to align the initial direction of the Fizeau fringes along H1H4, i.e., in a direction normal to the right-angle edge of H. So the initial wedge between the interfering wavefronts is along the direction of the rightangle edge of H, which along with R2 thus measure the small wedge angle along the x-direction between the interfering wavefronts due to small angular rotation of the incident plane wavefront about the y-axis. V and reference surface R1 can measure the angular tilt of the incident plane wavefront in the orthogonal direction, i.e., the angular deviation

It is also possible to determine y for the more general case when the initial wedge direction between the interfering wavefronts is along a direction (a ) making an angle with the x-axis. A modified form of Eq. (2) can be written as tan y a sin =a cos :
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Fig. 4. Plan and side views of CP.

APPLIED OPTICS / Vol. 47, No. 27 / 20 September 2008

Sensitivity of measurement (S) can be defined as the rate of change of angular displacement of the fringe with respect to the wavefront tilt . Differentiating Eq. (3), we obtain S = 2 d=cos2 : 7

Accuracy of measurement of would depend upon the measurement accuracies of and d, i.e., ; d. Partially differentiating Eq. (3) we get =d =2 d1=cos2 d; 8

Fig. 5. Ray paths in CP.

d =ddd =2d2 tan dd;

about x-direction. The magnitude and direction of the wavefront tilt are given by a p x 2 y 2 ; 5 6

d ;

10

tan a y =x :

Generally, the wavefront tilt is produced due to the angular tilt of a plane mirror attached to moving part of a system, such as the carriage of an air-bearingtype linear translation stage. An optical schematic of the setup for the measurement of the tilt /angular errors of the carriage is shown in Fig. 6. The transmitted component of the expanded collimated beam represented by plane wavefront ABC falls normally on the plane mirror M after transmission through beam splitter BS1. M is attached to the carriage of a linear translation stage. The linear motion of M is indicated by a double arrow. The reflected beam from M is sent to a CP with reference surfaces R1 and R2 after reflection on BS1. Another beam splitter BS2 directs the interfering components from CP, R1, and R2 towards a lens system consisting of a telescope objective I1 and an imaging lens I2. Fringes formed on a rotating diffuser screen (RD) are captured by a 2D CCD detector, frame grabber (FG), and personal computer (PC).

where represents the measurement inaccuracy of and d and dd represent inaccuracies in the measurement of angular displacement and initial fringe spacing d, respectively. and d are the inaccuracies in the measurement of corresponding to d and dd, respectively. Because of the presence of the d2 term in the denominator of Eq. (9), the effect of dd on is much less compared to that of d on . Figure 7 shows a plot of versus for three different values of fringe spacing d, as obtained using Eq. (3). Since the measurement range depends on , and for convenience of calculations, is treated as independent variable for the theoretical curves. The variations shown in Fig. 7 are similar to typical tangent curves, which are almost linear for smaller values of the variables. A large change in the value of corresponding to a small change in is evident from Fig. 7, which also shows the range of measurement. Figure 8 shows the variation of sensitivity S with for different values of fringe spacing d [Eq. (7)]. Large values of S for smaller values of and hence are evident from Fig. 8. Taking d 0:5 and dd

Fig. 6. Optical schematic of the setup for the measurement of tilt/ angular errors of the carriage of an air-bearing-type linear translation stage.

Fig. 7. Plot of versus for d 25 mm, 20 mm, 15 mm. 20 September 2008 / Vol. 47, No. 27 / APPLIED OPTICS 4903

0:5 mm in Eqs. (8)(10), we obtain the variation of with for different values of d as shown in Fig. 9.
3. Results and Discussion

Results for the wavefront tilt produced due to a known transparent glass wedge plate (13} and refractive index 1:516; not shown in Fig. 6), which is inserted in the beam path between BS1 and BS2, with its wedge in a particular direction, are presented. Figures 10 and 11 show the grabbed fringes without and with the wedge plate, respectively, in the incoming beam path, while the mirror M remains stationary. Initial fringe spacing corresponding to H and V are 11:88 mm and 9:9 mm, respectively. The inclination of the resultant wedges directions is 42:02 and 34:47, respectively, due to the introduction of the wedge plate in the incoming beam path. Calculated values of x and y are given by 4:95} and 4:52} , respectively, which corresponds to a wavefront tilt of 6:71} in a direction 42:4 from the x-direction. It is important to carry out experimental validation of the fundamental characteristics of the technique obtained theoretically in the preceding section and illustrated in Figs. 79. Experimental verification has been done by measuring for different values of generated by using different wedge plates between BS1 and BS2 (Fig. 6). It is evident that there would be no loss of generality if the angular deviation is introduced along any one of the orthogonal directions, either x or y, i.e., H or V of the CP, as considered for the theoretical analysis related to the fundamental characteristics. Five different BK-7 wedge plates with 1 0:43}, 2 0:93}, 3 1:74}, 4 3:77}, and 5 5:27} have been used in this experiment. Typical interferograms obtained in V are shown in Figs. 12(a) 12(f). Figure 12(a) shows the initial fringes with d 11:25 mm, and Figs. 12(b)12(f) show angular rotations of the fringes with 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , and 5 , respectively. For simplicity only the relevant portions of V are shown in Fig. 12. To test the measurement precision and repeatability, measurement of is carried out a number of times (n 10) in similar conditions with each wedge plate (for 2, 3 , 4 , and 5 ) and for both positive and negative wedge directions. is cal-

Fig. 9. Plot of versus for d 25 mm, 20 mm, 15 mm (dd 0:5 mm and d 0:5)

culated for each , as explained in the preceding section, using Eq. (3). The mean values of the parameters and obtained in this experiment are plotted with respective error bars () as shown in Fig. 13. are obtained from the calculated values of p standard deviations ( ) by using the relation = n. To experimentally determine S at each measurement point, one needs to determine the change in angular rotation of the fringes from initial value to changed value ( ) for a small change in the angular deviation from to ( ) introduced by means of an additional wedge plate. In the present case, the wedge plate with 1 0:43} has been used as an additional wedge at each point for calculating S for the corresponding value of . Typical interferograms obtained in V for the measurement point 3 are shown in Figs. 14(a)14(d). Figures 14 (a) and 14(b) show the initial fringes and fringe rotation with 3 . Figures 14(c) and 14(d) show changes in the angular rotation of the fringes with (3 ) and (3 ), respectively. The experimentally obtained values of S for different are shown in Fig. 15.

Fig. 8. Plot of S versus for d 25 mm, 20 mm, 15 mm, 10 mm, 5 mm, 1 mm. 4904 APPLIED OPTICS / Vol. 47, No. 27 / 20 September 2008

Fig. 10. Grabbed fringes in the initial setting.

Fig. 13. Plot of the mean values of versus for d 11:25 mm and 6:25 mm with error bars for . Fig. 11. Rotation of fringes due to wavefront tilt.

It is evident that the experimentally obtained results have a close resemblance to those obtained theoretically. Small discrepancies in the experimentally obtained and theoretical values as obtained from Eq. (7) of S are due to nonlinear variation of with over the interval , while we assumed to be linear for the experimental determination. We briefly describe the construction of the CP in the following paragraph: A good quality RP (9045; in the form of a dove prism) with a high-accuracy right angle and very small pyramidal errors of the surfaces is fabricated. The width surfaces of the prism are polished to good surface form (=10) and are polished parallel to each other to a few seconds of arc. Two smaller RPs (9045) with similar angular accuracies and optical finish are optically contacted on the width surfaces of

the dove-shaped RP to form a CP with dimension 75:0 mm in orthogonal directions and a width of 25:0 mm for individual prisms. It is evident that the residual errors in the right angles have no effect on the measurement accuracy, as the effects can be neutralized by adjusting the angular orientation of the reference plate and the desired initial Fizeau fringes can be obtained. A monolithic prism interferometer can be made by optically contacting two appropriate wedge plates in the proper angular orientation at appropriate places on the faces of the CP. The tilted front surfaces of the wedge plates would act as the reference surfaces. For the monolithic CP, the residual errors in the right angles can be compensated by adjusting the wedge direction of the plate during the optical contacting process to get the desired orientation of the Fizeau fringes.

Fig. 12. Typical interferograms in V of the CP. (a) Initial fringes with d 11:25 mm. Angular rotations of the fringes with (b) 1 0:43}, (c) 2 0:93}, (d) 3 1:74}, (e) 4 3:77}, and (f) 5 5:27}, respectively.

Fig. 14. Typical interferograms in V for the measurement point 3 . (a) Initial fringes with d 11:25 mm. (b) Fringe rotation with 3 . Angular rotation of the fringes with (c) (3 ) and (d) (3 ). 20 September 2008 / Vol. 47, No. 27 / APPLIED OPTICS 4905

Fig. 15. Plot of experimentally obtained values of S versus for d 11:25 mm.

4. Conclusions

We present a simple and highly sensitive new interferometric technique for the measurement of 2D small angles. Its main advantages are high sensitivity and measurement accuracy for the measurement of small tilt angles. As discussed in Section 2 the measurement accuracy depends mainly on the accuracy of measurement of fringe rotation and to a lesser extent on that of the initial fringe spacing. Thus for obtaining good quality straight interference fringes it is necessary to use a high quality expanded collimated beam, a good quality CP, and reference surfaces. The CP should be made from high homogeneity fused silica/optical glass with surface form better than =10 and good optical finish. The dimensional parameters and absolute value of the refractive index of the material of the CP do not enter into the angle computation, unlike in MI and TIR based methods. The present technique is particularly suitable for the measurement of angular errors of the carriage of an air-bearing-type linear translation stage. The probe mirror is not a part of the interference cavity, and hence it can travel a long distance without hampering the contrast of the interference fringes. The technique is also relatively insensitive to vibration as the actual interferometer can be installed in a separate location. The optical setup with the monolithic prism interferometer is practically insensitive to vibrations. We wish to thank S. S. Negi of our Optical Workshop for his help in setting up the experimental arrangement and Rishipal of our Optical Workshop for drawing the figures.
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