Design of a real-time Michelson interferometer for quantitative refractive index profile measurements

This paper presents an interferometer which has been developed for real time quantitative refractive index measurements at video rate. A theoretical accuracy analysis of the measured phase distribution is presented for linearly stratified refractive index profiles. The interferometer is characterized experimentally. Therefore, phase distributions generated by a tilted mirror are measured by the real time interferometer and a common interferometer which contains a piezoelectric transducer.