Abstract

This paper documents the design, construction and testing of a polarization interferometry based device for measuring the relative axial positioning of the individual segments of a multi-segment optical system. The device was designed to operate from an off-axis position in order to leave the central portion of the focal plane free for other sensors. The device was constructed and tested and shown to provide resolution of better than 2 nanometers. The concepts embodied in the device could be applied to nearly all segmented aperture phasing tasks.

© 1992 Optical Society of America