Measurement of tilt of a diffuse object by double-exposure speckle photography using speckle fanning in a photorefractive BaTiO3 crystal

A technique has been proposed for the measurement of tilt of a diffuse object using speckle fanning in a photorefractive BaTiO3 crystal. Free space geometry has been used for recording in which the axis of rotation of the object lies away in three-dimensional space. The method is based on recording of two exposures, one before- and another after the tilt, thus producing speckle correlation fringes due to overlapping of two speckle fans. We consider a generalized case of tilt, generating curved fringes with center shifted in the transverse direction. The axis of rotation lies perpendicular to the optical axis in three-dimensional space having the transverse and axial components of the shift in the center of rotation with respect to the diffuser plane. Fourier transform of the curved fringes produces correlation output. Measure of separation between the correlation peaks in transverse and axial directions provides information about the tilt angle, the direction of tilt, and the distance of rotation axis from the optical axis. Experimental results have been presented to validate the theoretical predictions. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.