Vol. 7, No. 4, August 2023, pp.

325–336

Current Optics and Photonics Invited Paper

Shearing Interferometry: Recent Research Trends and Applications

Ki-Nam Joo* and Hyo Mi Park

Department of Photonic Engineering, Chosun University, Gwangju 61452, Korea

(Received May 26, 2023 : accepted July 5, 2023)

We review recent research related to shearing interferometry, reported over the last two decades.
Shearing interferometry is categorized as azimuthal, radial, or lateral shearing interferometers by its
fundamental principle to generate interference. In this review the research trends for each technique are
provided, with a summary of experimental results containing theoretical background, the optical con-
figuration, analysis, and perspective on its application fields.

Keywords : Azimuthal shearing interferometer, Lateral shearing interferometer, Radial shearing

interferometer, Shearing interferometer, Wavefront reconstruction
OCIS codes : (120.3180) Interferometry; (120.3930) Metrological instrumentation; (120.6650)
Surface measurements, figure

I. INTRODUCTION fered with each other without any reference [9]. Because of
this self-interference in shearing interferometry, the effort
Optical interferometry has been attractive for character- to prepare the reference wavefront is no longer made, and
izing optical phenomena in physics, chemistry, and engi- the technique is more flexible for use in optical metrology.
neering because of its inherent high precision and well- Instead, a device to generate two or more shearing wave-
established techniques for extracting the contrast and phase fronts should be considered, and a wavefront-reconstruction
of an interferogram [1–3]. In dimensional metrology, it also procedure is additionally needed.
plays a very important role in measuring displacements/ In this review paper, we investigate recent publications
distances [4], reconstructing surfaces of specimens [5], and regarding shearing interferometry, reported over the last
characterizing film thicknesses [6]. The fundamentals of op- two decades. The type of shearing interferometry is catego-
tical interferometry are centered on comparing a measured rized according to its fundamental principle for generating
wavefront to a corresponding reference, according to the the interference, and each research trend is provided, with
wavelength of light. Hence the reference wavefront should a summary of experimental results in its application fields.
be well-defined and accurately determined. In the case of This review paper consists of the theoretical background for
optical surface metrology, the reference wavefront needs to shearing interferometers, the optical configurations, analy-
be planar or spherical for measuring the surface profile of a sis, and perspective. Even though not all recently reported
specimen; It can be theoretically and experimentally well- shearing interferometers can be introduced in this paper, we
calibrated with several methods, such as spatial filtering [7] believe this review contains the most important progress
and nulling techniques [8]. and theoretical and experimental results in shearing inter-
On the other hand, shearing interferometry has different ferometry. It is noted that this work is restricted and focused
features compared to typical interferometry, as an aspect of on typical shearing interferometers with spatially sheared
generating its interference. The measurement wavefront in wavefronts, not exceptional ones, such as the spectral-
shearing interferometry is split into two, and they are inter- shearing interferometers used to characterize the ultrashort

*Corresponding author: [email protected], ORCID 0000-0001-9484-2644

Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work
is properly cited.
Copyright © 2023 Current Optics and Photonics
pISSN: 2508-7266 / eISSN: 2508-7274 https://doi.org/10.3807/COPP.2023.7.4.325
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326 Current Optics and Photonics, Vol. 7, No. 4, August 2023

pulses and materials in laser physics [10, 11], or self-mixing sensitivity, while ASI does not provide any phase infor-
interferometers to measure displacements [12, 13]. mation for the axially symmetric shapes like defocus and
spherical aberrations, as shown in Fig. 3. In a radial shear-
II. FUNDAMENTALS OF SHEARING ing interferometer (RSI), one of the wavefronts is radially
INTERFEROMETRY contracted and the other is extended, to obtain the interfer-
ence in the overlapping region, as shown in Fig. 2. Based
When the wavefront of interest is incident upon a shear- on the radial shearing ratio between two wavefronts, the
ing interferometer, as shown in Fig. 1(a), it is split into axially symmetric wavefront can be reconstructed from the
more than two wavefronts, and they are interfered with radial gradient map, as shown in Fig. 4.
each other. On the other hand, a lateral shearing interferometer (LSI)
Because of the absence of a reference, the wavefront generates two sheared wavefronts to obtain the surface
is not compared to any typical shape, such as a plane or gradient map along the x- or y-directions. Even though two
a sphere. Instead, the differences between two sheared orthogonal gradient maps, i.e. both the x- and y-directional
wavefronts are contained in the interference fringe, and the gradient maps, should be measured to successfully recon-
gradient map of the wavefront can be obtained by phase ex- struct the original wavefront in LSI, as shown in Fig. 5,
traction. Even though further analysis for wavefront recon- this approach is more suitable for wavefront reconstruction
struction from the gradient map should be implemented in because the wavefront does not have any of the symmetry
the shearing interferometer, it is free from the preparation issues indicated in ASI and RSI. In addition, LSI is more
and calibration of a reference wavefront, mostly important convenient for measuring two surface gradient maps, with
in two-arm interferometers, as shown in Fig. 1(b). a simple modification of the rotation of the lateral shearing
In general, a shearing interferometer can be categorized device. In fact, the combination of ASI and RSI could realize
as rotational/azimuthal [14], radial [15], or lateral [16] by reconstruction of the wavefront independent of the wave-
the way it shears the wavefronts, as shown in Fig. 2. In an front-symmetry issue, but their optical configurations are too
azimuthal shearing interferometer (ASI), the azimuthal different from each other to be configured together. Instead,
angles of two wavefronts are slightly different from each ASI and RSI have been used respectively in measuring the
other, and the rotational gradient map can be obtained from aforementioned asymmetric and symmetric features of the
the interference fringe. In theory, the wavefronts are not
laterally shifted, and their sizes are exactly the same. In this
case, axially asymmetric features of the wavefront such as
coma and astigmatism aberrations are detected with high

FIG. 2. Wavefront shearing by three kinds of shearing

interferometers.

(a)

(b)

FIG. 1. Optical layout. (a) Shearing interferometry, and (b) typical FIG. 3. Rotational gradient maps by azimuthal shearing
interferometry. interferometry.
Current Optics and Photonics, Vol. 7, No. 4, August 2023 327

wavefront. and no fringe variations were observed. In the case of the

In shearing interferometry, a temporally and spatially wavefront from the planet, the interference fringe varied ac-
coherent light source is typically used, because two sheared cording to the rotation of the Dove prism, due to its axially
wavefronts should be interfered. When using a broadband asymmetric feature. Then the existence of the planet could
light source, the optical-path difference between two wave- be predicted by observing the fringe variations in ASI.
fronts needs to be within the temporal coherence length of In addition, ASI can be also applied to flipping inter-
the source, while the shearing amount is restricted by the ferometry by using a retroreflector or an equivalent right-
spatial coherence of the extended source. angle prism with two beam splitters, for quantitative phase
microscopy and asymmetric aberration detection as simple
III. RESEARCH TRENDS IN configurations [19, 20]. As shown in Fig. 8, the shearing
SHEARING INTERFEROMETRY device was composed of two beam splitters and the two
wavefronts generated by this prism assembly were flipped
3.1. Azimuthal Shearing Interferometry with respect to each other. The wavefront rotation was real-
Most ASIs are typically implemented with a dove prism ized by the rotation of the prism assembly [20]. Another
for image rotation, as shown in Fig. 6. When the wavefront simple way to obtain two azimuthal shearing wavefronts
is incident to a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, two wave- is to use a grating pair. Although it includes moiré fringes
fronts are rotated each by the angle of its own Dove prism, similar to the lateral shearing pattern [21, 22], this simple
and the interference fringe can be obtained. technique was very useful for characterizing an X-ray
Based on the detection of only axially asymmetric wavefront, to minimize the optical components.
wavefronts in ASI, it has been recently applied to detect-
ing extrasolar planets [17, 18]. An on-axis (star) and an 3.2. Radial Shearing Interferometry
off-axis (planet) point source were located in the simulator For axially symmetric surface-figure or wavefront
of a planetary system, and the interference fringes were measurements, RSI is an effective tool compared to other
collected as one of the Dove prisms in the ASI was rotated, interferometric techniques, because of its stability and
as shown in Fig. 7. Because the wavefront from the star compactness. Moreover, RSI only needs a single radial
was axially symmetric, the interference fringe was null, gradient map, as opposed to LSI, which requires two or-
thogonal gradient maps. One stable RSI is based on a cy-
clic interferometer with a zoom-lens system [23–25], i.e. a

FIG. 6. Optical configuration for azimuthal shearing

FIG. 4. Radial gradient maps by radial shearing interferometry. interferometry: BS, beam splitter; M, mirror.

FIG. 5. Lateral gradient maps by lateral shearing interferometry.

328 Current Optics and Photonics, Vol. 7, No. 4, August 2023

FIG. 8. Flipped/reversal and rotational shearing interferometer

with two beam splitters. Reprinted from Opt. Commun. 2004;
233; 245-252, Copyright © 2004, with permission from
Elsevier [20].

the field of view were verified [27].

3.3. Lateral Shearing Interferometry

Among all shearing interferometers, most researchers
have focused on LSI because of their unrestricted applica-
tions to measure wavefronts and surface figures. Further-
more, their optical configuration and implementation are
more straightforward than for other shearing interferom-
FIG. 7. The optical layout and the interferograms of the eters. The simplest way to realize LSI is to use a shearing
simulated solar system with two point sources: DF, neutral plate or a wedge prism to confirm the collimation of the
density filter; SF, spatial filter; M, mirror; BS, beam splitter; DP,
Dove prism; OP, observation plane. The star beam is aligned light beam. However, LSI has been applied to more exten-
with the RSI’s optical axis, and the planet beam is inclined with sive areas, such as adaptive optics [28–30], freeform sur-
respect to the star beam. Reprinted with permission from [17] face metrology [31–33], and biomedical diagnosis [34–40].
Copyright © 2020, The Optical Society. In LSI, three issues to confirm its benefit in the applica-
tion areas mentioned above have been considered: Conve-
nient adjustment of the lateral shearing amount, compact
Sagnac interferometer, as shown in Fig. 9(a), in which the common-path configuration, and snapshot capability.
contracted and expanded wavefronts pass through the same The amount of lateral shearing is the most important pa-
optical components and most environmental errors can be rameter in LSI, and measurement performance aspects such
reduced because of its common-path configuration. For the as sensitivity and precision are strongly dependent on it [41].
instrumentation of RSI, polarizing optical components have When the measurand is slowly varying, the lateral shear-
been introduced in cyclic interferometers, and a polariza- ing should increase to obtain a lateral gradient with a high
tion camera where an array of four polarizers with 0°, 45°, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and vice versa in the case of
90°, and 135°-rotated transmission axes were pixelated, drastically varying objects. To adjust the amount of lateral
was used to immediately calculate the phase map, as shown shearing, a Michelson interferometer with retroreflectors
in Fig. 9(b), without temporal phase shifting [24, 25]. was used in the shearing part [42]. In a cyclic interferom-
Recently, a compact snapshot RSI has been presented eter, the tip-and-tilt motion of a beam splitter or a mirror
as a wavefront-measuring sensor [26] and a surface-figure was introduced to produce the off-axis interferogram [43],
metrological tool [27] with a geometric phase lens (GPL) as shown in Fig. 11.
and a polarization camera, as shown in Fig. 10(a). Similar Even though interferometric shearing devices were
to a zone plate, a GPL has the ability to generate two dis- widely used in LSI because of their intuitive convenience,
tinguishable wavefronts, one convergent and the other di- much effort has been put into the compactness of the opti-
vergent, as shown in Fig. 10(b), which can be used for RSI cal layout, to extend its applicability in various areas. The
by the scheme of a GPL pair. In this case, the polarization use of a birefringent prism [44, 45] and a grating [46–51]
and diffraction characteristics of a GPL maximize the dif- significantly reduced the system complexity for observing
fraction efficiency of two diffracted wavefronts, and enable dynamic physical phenomena. The adoption of LSI with a
us to instantaneously measure the wavefront using a po- two-dimensional (2D) grating (so-called quadriwave LSI
larization camera. In this research, the dynamic wavefront [47–51] as shown in Fig. 12) makes the system, which
measurements were demonstrated [26] and surface-figure simultaneously yields x- and y-directional gradient maps,
measurements with various spherical wavefronts to extend compact.
Current Optics and Photonics, Vol. 7, No. 4, August 2023 329

(a)

Incident beam
Large shearing beam
Small shearing beam
PBS QWP

M2 PCMOS

Polarizer
array
45 90
0 135
L
CMOS

M1
Micro lens array

(b)

FIG. 9. Optical layout and principle of cyclic radial shearing interferometers. (a) Cyclic radial shearing interferometer with a zoom-
lens system, and (b) snapshot cyclic radial shearing interferometer using a polarization camera: PBS, polarizing beam splitter; QWP,
45°-rotated quarter-wave plate; M1, M2, mirrors; L, lens; PCMOS, polarization pixelated complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor
camera. The inset is the structure of the PCMOS. Reprinted with permission from [24] Copyright © 2020, The Optical Society.

Besides, a polarization grating (one of the geometric from them, which is also important in wavefront-measuring
phase components) has been used to generate two orthogo- devices such as Shack-Hartmann sensors. The wavefront
nally polarized and laterally sheared wavefronts [41]. can be reconstructed from its gradient using two different
One of the main research themes in LSI has been snap- approaches, as shown in Fig. 14. One is direct integration
shot measurement capability, to reduce the measurement of the gradient values, the so-called zonal method, while
time and minimize the noise caused by environmental the other is based on combination of well-defined math-
variations. The traditional way to extract the phase map ematical basis functions, the modal method.
from the lateral shearing interferogram is based on tempo- In the zonal method, the calculation requires much ef-
ral phase shifting, which makes snapshot measurement dif- fort and time, but the wavefront can be reconstructed in
ficult. However, the spatial carrier-frequency method, using greater detail. Most of the recent approaches using the
a 2D Fourier transformation and spatial filtering, has been zonal method have been implemented in LSI and based
adopted [47–55] and the phase map could be obtained with on the Southwell geometry, where the wavefronts to be
a single image, as shown in Fig. 13. calculated coincide with their local slope measurements.
Although this spatial carrier-frequency method sacrifices From the fundamental theory of Southwell’s reconstruc-
lateral resolution in the phase map, it is sufficient for recon- tion algorithm, modified algorithms have been proposed to
structing the wavefronts and surface figures in LSI based improve the accuracy [57, 58], reduce the computing time
on wedge prism and grating. Another technique to immedi- [59], and confirm the convergence of the result. To improve
ately obtain the phase map is to use a polarization camera, reconstruction accuracy, more gradient data were included
as introduced in RSI [41, 56]. in the integration formula, with diagonal gradients beyond
the horizontal and vertical ones [57], as shown in Fig. 15.
3.4. Wavefront-reconstruction Algorithm To significantly reduce the calculation time, the wave-
Once the gradient maps in shearing interferometry are front to be reconstructed was divided and an optimal zonal
ready, the original wavefront needs to be reconstructed block based on the computational complexity was deter-
330 Current Optics and Photonics, Vol. 7, No. 4, August 2023

mined [59]. By reasonable wavefront division, the total wavefront shapes, which leads to careful considerations.
computation time was much less than that for the typical The Zernike polynomials have been widely used for modal
zonal method. analysis because of their mathematical expressions, which
On the other hand, wavefront reconstruction can be rap- indicate the optical aberrations [60, 61]. In this case the
idly implemented by the modal method, although the wave- gradient of the wavefront can be assumed as a combina-
front should be properly assumed with the basis functions tion of the modified Zernike polynomials, and the original
and higher-order functions should be used for complicated wavefront is reconstructed by finding their coefficients.
The modal method has been further investigated in ASI
and RSI, because misalignment of the components in the
optical configuration can induce a small amount of lateral
wavefront shift as the unexpected. To calibrate these lat-
eral gradients in the wavefront reconstruction [62, 63], the
decentering of the wavefront was included in the Zernike
polynomials, and was determined by the optimization pro-
cess along with the Zernike polynomial coefficients.

IV. DISCUSSION AND OUTLOOK

4.1. Application Fields of Shearing Interferometry

Because of the absence of a reference wavefront, shear-
(a)

(b)

FIG. 10. Principle of dynamic wavefront sensor. (a) Schematic

of a radial shearing wavefront sensor using a geometric phase
lens (GPL) pair and polarization pixelated complementary
metal-oxide-semiconductor camera (PCMOS), and (b) FIG. 12. Schematic of a quadriwave radial shearing inter­
characteristic response of a GPL. Reprinted with permission ferometer. Reprinted from T. Ling et al. Sci. Rep. 2017; 7; 9
from [26] Copyright © 2022, The Optical Society. [51], Copyright © 2017, T. Ling et al.

(a) (b)

FIG. 11. Schematic of light beams in cyclic lateral shearing interferometry: (a) P-polarized component, (b) s-polarized component.
Reprinted with permission from [43] Copyright © 2017, The Optical Society.
Current Optics and Photonics, Vol. 7, No. 4, August 2023 331

FIG. 13. Spatial carrier-frequency method using a 2D Fourier transformation. Reprinted from T. Ling et al. Sci. Rep. 2017; 7; 9 [51],
Copyright © 2017, T. Ling et al.

FIG. 14. Categorization of wavefront-reconstruction methods.

(a) (b)

FIG. 15. Algorithm of zonal methods. (a) Grid-sampling geometry for the zonal wavefront-reconstruction method, and (b) domain-
divided. Reprinted from [57] Copyright © 2022, Optical Society of Korea.

ing interferometers have been widely used in science and transferred to a deformable mirror, to cancel it out. These
industry. In astronomical physics, they have an important adaptive optics also have been applied to industrial fields,
role in estimating the wavefront and detecting its aberra- especially EUV lithography systems [66].
tions, for adaptive optics [28–30, 64, 65]. The wavefront Another application of shearing interferometers is mea-
distortion is measured by the shearing interferometer and suring the surface figures of optical components [27, 31–33,
332 Current Optics and Photonics, Vol. 7, No. 4, August 2023

41, 42, 44]. As mentioned, RSI can be an effective tool to served by other techniques.
determine the surface shapes of the spherical and aspherical In addition to physical and industrial applications, shear-
lenses and mirrors used in digital cameras and smartphone ing interferometers recently have proved remarkable for
cameras. In the case of LSI, the measurement of freeform quantitative phase imaging in biomedical applications [74–
surfaces has been attempted [42, 44] because LSI allows us 78]. Similar to phase-contrast microscopy and differential
to obtain x- and y-directional gradient maps, which recon- interference microscopy, shearing interferometry is capable
struct the original surface figures. of obtaining phase maps of a specimen, including live cells.
A shearing interferometer is very useful in observing dy-
namic phenomena, with its simple optical configuration us- 4.2. ASI and RSI versus LSI
ing a wedge or Wollaston prism to detect the phase changes Regardless of the kind of wavefront, LSI is more conve-
that lead to the physical variation of a material [67–72]. It nient than ASI or RSI because it includes all of the gradient
has been used to measure diffusion [67], tear film [68, 69], information to reconstruct the original wavefront. How-
plasma [70, 71], exploding wires [72], and radiative heat ever, LSI requires two directional gradient maps (x- and y-
transfer [73], for example, which are difficult to be ob- directional gradients), and in fact can be also realized with

Vertical 2nd Astigmatism Oblique 2nd Astigmatism Oblique 2nd Astigmatism

(Time = 12.6 s) (Time = 16.4 s) (Time = 20.7 s)

4 4 4
Height (m)

Height (m)

Height (m)
2 2 2
0 0 0
2 2 2
4 4 4
4 4 4
2 2 2
Y 4 Y 4 Y 4
ax 0 2 ax 0 2 ax 0 2
is 2 0 is 2 0 is 2 0
(m (m (m
m 2 m) m 2 m) m 2 m)
) 4 4 is (m ) 4 4 is (m ) 4 4 is (m
X ax X ax X ax

FIG. 16. Reconstructed off-axis aberrations of wavefront by a radial shearing interferometer. Reprinted with permission from [26],
Copyright © 2022, The Optical Society.

1.000
ratio (s)

1.000
0.995
ratio (s)
shearing

0.995
0.990 S = 0.9894
shearing

0.990 S = 0.9894
0.985
RadialRadial

0.985
0.980
0 20 40 60 80 100
0.980 Distance between the origin of the spherical wave
0 20 40 GPL pair
and the 60(mm) 80 100
Distance between the (a)
origin of the spherical wave
2,500
(rad) (rad)

and the GPL pair (mm)

4 (rad)
2,000
2,500
of theof the

Y axis (mm)
phasephase

2 40
4 (rad)
1,500
2,000 0
Y axis (mm)
PV value

2 20
2 40
quardrature

1,000
1,500 0
4 0
PV value

20
2 4 2 0 2 4
quardrature

500
1,000 X axis (mm)
4 0
4 2 0 2 4
500 X axis (mm)
0 20 40 60 80 100
Distance between the origin of the spherical wave
0 20 40 GPL pair
and the 60(mm) 80 100
Distance between the origin of the spherical wave
and the GPL pair (mm)
(b)

FIG. 17. Radial shearing ratio variation. (a) The variation of the radial shearing ratio with changing the radius of wavefront
curvature, and (b) the peak-to-valley (PV) of a quadratic phase, related to varying radius of curvature. Reprinted with permission
from [26], Copyright © 2022, The Optical Society.
Current Optics and Photonics, Vol. 7, No. 4, August 2023 333

a combination of ASI and RSI. The difficulty of combining men in the azimuthal, radial, or lateral direction, to obtain the
ASI and RSI is centered on the implementation of two dif- phase map corresponding to the wavefront gradient along the
ferent optical configurations simultaneously. Furthermore, shearing direction due to the self-interference. In this review,
there is a lack of zonal methods for ASI and RSI to recon- the research trend of each technique was introduced, along
struct the wavefront. This is why plenty of research related with the advanced techniques and experimental results.
to LSI has been reported. However, there is no purely axi-
ally asymmetric surface in reality, which means RSI has the FUNDING
possibility to measure freeform surfaces with a single radial
gradient map [26]. In this case, of course, the asymmetry of Basic Science Research Program through the National
the shape should be so small as to be negligible in the mea- Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), funded by the Min-
sured results, such as a wavefront with a small amount of istry of Education (NRF-2021R1A2C1008661).
off-axis aberration, as shown in Fig. 16.
No single type of shearing interferometers dominates DISCLOSURES
the others; Each type has its own advantages for applica-
tions. In measuring off-axis aberrations such as coma and The authors declare that they have no known competing
astigmatism of the wavefront, for instance, ASI is the most financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appropriate, because of its high sensitivity to avoid effects appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
caused by the axially symmetric aberrations, while vice
versa for RSI. Compared to LSI, ASI and RSI only need a DATA AVAILABILITY
single azimuthal and radial gradient respectively to restore
the wavefront, which is competitive with LSI. No data were generated or analyzed in the current study.

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