Absolute interferometric testing based on reconstruction of rotational shear

A method, believed to be new, for the absolute interferometric testing of flat or spherical surfaces is presented. It is based on the classic three-flat test, combined with additional measurements of one test piece in different rotational positions. Full-surface absolute maps for each test piece are determined with a data-processing technique based on the rotationally sheared maps of the rotated surface. An optimized numerical reconstruction algorithm employing linear filtering and superposition of the different rotational shear spectra in the angular frequency domain is used to reconstruct the rotationally sheared data. The technique does not require any assumptions about the surfaces under test; has low error propagation, even in the case of high spatial resolution; and is computationally efficient.