Abstract

The corner cube interferometer employing extended sources requires very good transverse alignment of the retroreflector if the optical path difference is not to vary across the field of view. It is shown in this paper that this problem can be eliminated by the addition of a plane mirror to the interferometer forming a double pass system. For a single pass instrument, it is shown that the sensitivity to alignment errors may be exploited to obtain a powerful method of monitoring in three dimension the motion of a point otherwise inaccessible. Details of the expected performance of this method are derived.

© 1976 Optical Society of America

Designs of multipass optical configurations based on the use of a cube corner retroreflector in the interferometer

Ruyi Wei, Xuemin Zhang, Jinsong Zhou, and Sizhong Zhou
Appl. Opt. 50(12) 1673-1681 (2011)

Moving corner-cube mirror interferometer and reflection characteristic of corner-cube mirror

Qinghua Yang
Appl. Opt. 49(21) 4088-4095 (2010)

Theory of the Corner-Cube Interferometer*

Edson R. Peck
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 38(12) 1015-1024 (1948)

Some More Aspects of the Michelson Interferometer with Cube Corners

M. V. R. K. Murty
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 50(1) 7-10 (1960)

Corner cube reflector for cryogenic interferometric use

Reiner Hofmann, Reinhard Katterloher, and Peter Essenwanger
Appl. Opt. 25(24) 4614-4617 (1986)