Fast Surface Profiling by White-Light Interferometry Using Symmetric Spectral Optical Filter

We propose a surface profiling algorithm by white-light interferometry that extends sampling interval to twice of the widest interval among those used in conventional algorithms. The proposed algorithm uses a novel function called an in-phase component of an interferogram to detect the peak of the interferogram, while conventional algorithms used the squared-envelope function or the envelope function. We show that the in-phase component has the same peak as the corresponding interferogram when an optical filter has a symmetric spectral distribution. We further show that the in-phase component can be reconstructed from sampled values of the interferogram using the so-called quadrature sampling technique. Since reconstruction formulas used in the algorithm are very simple, the proposed algorithm requires low computational costs. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.