Measurement of radius of curvature directly in the interferometer confocal position

This paper presents a new method for radius of curvature measurement by interferometers. The radius measurement is carried out directly in the interferometer confocal position without the need for a specific hardware and thus allows us to measure a much more diverse range of optical surfaces than standard methods. The method is based on measuring a number of phase maps and displacements at several steps through the confocal null position. Radius of curvature is then computed as the tangent slope of the measured defocus-displacement pair values in the confocal position. A relative accuracy of the method is approximately 0.05%, which makes the method suitable for a vast number of applications. Results of the method are verified using standard confocal cat's eye technique.