Fast measurement of wavefront aberration in double-grating Ronchi lateral shearing interferometry

The accuracy of the shear-phase retrieval method is critical for accurate wavefront aberration measurements in double-grating Ronchi lateral shearing interferometry. Currently, the suppression of the interferences of unwanted diffractions generated by the Ronchi grating at the image plane is eliminated by adding more phase shifts, which increases the measurement time. Here, a stepped phase-shifting algorithm is proposed to suppress the unwanted diffractions and retrieve the shear phase between +/- 1st orders accurately with fewer phase shifts, and the measurement efficiency can be increased by 25% at least. The minimum number of phase shifts, which depends on the high diffraction orders existing in the interferograms, is analyzed. The proposed method was verified via numerical simulations and experiments. The wavefront measurement was validated via a comparison with the results of point-diffracted interferometry, and the root-mean-square difference was within 2.0 nm. (c) 2023 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)