Innovative evaluation method for shearing interferograms

A solution to the problem of quantitative wavefront reconstruction from shearing interferograms will be presented The evaluation is based on Fourier filtering with a transfer function specifically determined for this purpose. The influence of the edge of the pupil is taken into account by using a novel window function. This technique does not require any a priori information about the shape of the wavefront. It reconstructs the wavefront inside the: whole aperture and gives accurate results with a high lateral resolution for relatively large shears. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.