A New Apre Interferometer: Abstract

A common assumption is interferometers are inherently accurate. High quality reference surfaces, Fizeau common path designs, and powerful software give this impression. Unfortunately life is not so simple. The interferometer optical design, though often ignored, determines much of the quality of particular interferometer measurement. In this paper three performance parameters are discussed: Image resolution, image distortion and retrace error. Data from ÄPRE S-Series, Fizeau and LUPI interferometers, demonstrates state-of-the-art performance