An interferometer with a laser source focused on a pinhole produces monochromatic, coherent light with a spherical wave front. A beam splitter divides the light along light paths which are directed through coupling mirrors to the opposing parallel reflecting surfaces of a movable rigid body stage plate. Reflected energies returning along incident paths normal to the reflecting surfaces are directed back through the beam splitter to an exit pinhole where they are combined and interfere. A photoel...

An interferometer having beamsplitting and reflective coatings on the same surface of a beamsplitter member. The fixed length path of the interferometer includes a compensator matched to the beamsplitter member, a Cat's Eye Retroreflector, the reflective coating and a retro-mirror. The variable length path of the interferometer includes a moving coil mirror, a movable Cat's Eye Retroreflector and the retro-mirror.

A high resolution interferometer is provided which is insensitive to slight misalignment of its elements, avoids channeling in the spectrum, generates a maximum equal path fringe contrast, produces an even two-sided interferogram without critical matching of the wedge angles of the beamsplitter and compensator wedges, and is optically phase tunable. The interferometer includes a mirror along the path of each beam component produced by the beamsplitter, for reflecting the beam component from the ...

An interferometer of relatively simple design which is tilt compensated, and which facilitates adjustment of the path lengths of split light beams. The interferometer includes a pair of plate-like elements with a dielectric coating and an oil film between them, that forms a beamsplitter interface, and with a pair of reflector surfaces at the ends of the plates. A pair of retroreflectors are positioned so that each split beam component is directed by a retroreflector onto one of the reflector sur...

An interferometer device and method for detecting variations in the effective path length of light on opposite sides of an enclosed ring-like optical path. Laser light is split and passed in opposite directions around an area in one or more planes to a point where the beams come together at which point they are directed, in coincidence, into one or more photodetectors. A variable light delay means is located in each light path and each delay means is operated repetitively to vary the delay by a ...

An interferometer for Fourier spectroscopy, wherein the interferometer comprises a beamsplitter (14) and two retroreflectors (20, 26), characterized in that the beamsplitter (14) is mounted movable, e.g., mounted pivotally or displacably, while both retroreflectors (20, 26) are arranged as fixed retroreflectors. The proposed structure is simple to produce, can be made substantially insensible to environmental vibrations, and it is well suited for routine measurements for the determination of qua...

A laser beam is split into two components which remain coherent, are differently frequency-shifted, orthogonally polarized and recombined. The recombined beam is expanded and directed into polarization type beam splitter directing one component into a reference branch, the other one into a test branch. Both branches return the component beams which are combined and polarization filtered so that they may interfere on account of local optical path differences. Brightness oscillations are photoelec...

In an interferometer comprising a beam splitter made up of a parallel planar plate and translucent (that is, semi-reflecting) films formed on both sides thereof, and a pair of reverse reflectors disposed at predetermined distances from the two surfaces of the beam splitter, an incident beam is split into two beams by one of the translucent films, and the two beams are reflected by the reverse reflectors, thus interfering with each other at the other translucent film.

The invention relates to an interferometer comprising a beamsplitter (10), a mirror (11) for retroreflecting beams (S1, S2), at least one pair of mirrors (12, 13) made up of two plane mirrors for reflecting the beams (S1, S2). The pair of mirrors (12, 13) is fitted in a rigid structure (15), which is arranged to rotate around an axis (A). It is characteristic that the beamsplitter (10) is attached to a body (20) supported on the mount and that the axis (A) passes through the body (20). According...

The present invention provides a technique enabling to control fringe spacing s and an interference width W independently of each other, which are important parameters for an interferometer using an electron biprism.In the present invention, two electron biprisms 9u, 9b are used in two stages along the optical axis, and fringe spacing s and an interference width W are controlled independently of each other by controlling a voltage applied to an electrode of each of the electron biprisms. Also Fr...