Absolute testing of flats in sub-stitching interferometer by rotation-shift method

Abstract

Most of the commercial available sub-aperture stitching interferometers measure the surface with a standard lens that produces a reference wavefront, and the precision of the interferometer is generally limited by the standard lens. The test accuracy can be achieved by removing the error of reference surface by the absolute testing method. When the testing accuracy (repeatability and reproducibility) is close to 1nm, in addition to the reference surface, other factors will also affect the measuring accuracy such as environment, zoom magnification, stitching precision, tooling and fixture, the characteristics of optical materials and so on. We establish a stitching system in the thousand level cleanroom. The stitching system is including the Zygo interferometer, the motion system with Bilz active isolation system at level VC-F. We review the traditional absolute flat testing methods and emphasize the method of rotation-shift functions. According to the rotation-shift method we get the profile of the reference lens and the testing lens. The problem of the rotation-shift method is the tilt error. In the motion system, we control the tilt error no more than 4 second to reduce the error. In order to obtain higher testing accuracy, we analyze the influence surface shape measurement accuracy by recording the environment error with the fluke testing equipment.