Interferometric method to measure the Goos–Hänchen shift

We propose and demonstrate an interferometric method to measure the Goos–Hänchen (GH) shift, which is based on observing the interference between p- and s-polarized beams. In our method both p- and s-polarized beams are observed simultaneously and across the entire beam profile. To demonstrate our method, we measured the GH shift of aluminum (Al) and glass at different values of the incidence angle ranging from 20° to 70°, with a helium–neon laser as source. We compared the experimental result with theoretical calculations and found a good agreement between them. Our method also enables us to measure the GH shift at any point across the entire beam profile, for arbitrary beam profiles. This is not possible with the methods currently in use. We presented the observed values for the Gaussian mode used, which enables us to find the relative shifts between the p and s components at various points on the incident profile after reflection.