Reconstruction of a Light Beam Wave Front by Synthesis of a Shear Interferogram

The interferograms produced by the reference light beam, actually, contain the information not on the shape of the wavefront but on phase aberrations introduced by the test object. The latter is generally the goal of interferornetric measurements. However, in most cases the required information is that on the shape of the wavefront of the investigated beam. Such necessity arise, for example, when measuring the shape and quality of optical elements without reference pieces, or, in the case of linear adaptive systems operating on the phase conjugation basis.