The CAO has an array of interferometers that meet most industrial and many government optical metrology needs. They are located in two adjacent lab spaces.
Both of our Interferometer lab spaces are designated as general laboratory space; used for inspection of component optical elements and for testing optical system wavefront quality and or overall optical system performance.
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| One of the CAO interferometer labs |
In these labs we have several interferometers; a WYKO 400 Fizeau phase shifting interferometer (PSI) with a 6" beam expander, a WYKO Siris 630 Twyman Green, a ZYGO MARK II with updated with new phase shift interferometer software, and a point diffraction interferometer (PDI).
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| Here is our WYKO interferometer |
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| One of our Point Diffraction Interferometers |
These interferometers are outfitted to accept any shape optic; a good example is the cylinder mandrel used for x-ray mirror replication.
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| The cylinder mandrel with our in house corrector plate. |
A student designed corrector plate allowed the measurement area to increase by 50%. This corrector plate was fabricated by our staff right here at the CAO using deterministic polishing techniques.
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| Before correction |
After correction |
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| Showing a significant increase in analysis area |
Included in our array of interferometers is a host of large optics metrology hardware providing us the ability to perform measurements on a wide variety of sizes and shapes of optic. A good example is the CAO designed interferometers used at the NASA X-Ray Calibration Facility (XRCF) for measuring the James Web Space Telescope (JWST) mirror segments in vacuum and at space temperatures. Data from these tests are used to polish the mirrors to specification while at operational temperatures.
