A system for inspecting specimens such as semiconductor wafers is provided. The system provides scanning of dual-sided specimens using a diffraction grating that widens and passes nth order (n>0) wave fronts to the specimen surface and a reflective surface for each channel of the light beam. Two channels and two reflective surfaces are preferably employed, and the wavefronts are combined using a second diffraction grating and passed to a camera system having a desired aspect ratio. The system preferably comprises a damping arrangement which filters unwanted acoustic and seismic vibration, including an optics arrangement which scans a first portion of the specimen and a translation or rotation arrangement for translating or rotating the specimen to a position where the optics arrangement can scan the remaining portion(s) of the specimen. The system further includes means for stitching scans together, providing for smaller and less expensive optical elements.
This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/519,604, entitled "Reduced Coherence Symmetric Grazing Incidence Differential Interferometer," filed Apr. 5, 2000, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,057,741 which is a continuation in part of U.S patent application Ser. No. 09/95,673, entitled "Method and Apparatus for Scanning, Stitching and Damping Measurements of a Double-Sided Inspection Tool," filed on Jun. 18, 1999, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,174,752, both of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
An instrument for measuring dimensional changes in materials, such as ultra-low thermal expansion materials, contains an optically balanced measuring loop. Both an object beam and a loop beam propagate around the measuring loop. The object beam encounters both opposite side surfaces of the test object and the loop beam encounters remaining components of the measuring loop in common with the object beam. The object and loop beams can be separately compared to reference beams for producing heterodyne signal beams.
A method of seismic processing for obtaining information on the geophysics of the subsoil includes acquiring seismic traces at at least one point on the surface of the subsoil or in the subsoil, the seismic traces corresponding on each occasion to two perpendicular components of a shear wave emitted into the subsoil and reflected by different interfaces therein; applying a succession of transformations (.perp.) at least to a temporal portion of the traces for each of these assumptions, determining the value of a parameter representative of the coherence/similarity between the result traces obtained in this way; and election as a function of the values obtained in this way that one of the hypotheses which is considered as being most representative of the subsoil, the two result traces obtained for said hypothesis being compensated traces of the subsoil birefringency.
