Carrier squeezing interferometry: suppressing phase errors from the inaccurate phase shift

The carrier squeezing interferometry algorithm is proposed to retrieve the phase from interferograms with phase shift errors. A linear carrier is introduced in the interferograms, and the image data is rearranged by the squeezing interferometry technology. In the spectrum of the rearranged image, the error lobe and the phase lobe are separated so the error-free phase can be retrieved by filtering. The simulated interferograms with phase shift errors are computed, and the precisions are better than 8: 4 x 10(-4)lambda. Its validation is verified by experiments, where a mean precision of 0.0040 lambda is obtained. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America