Generalized phase-shifting interferometry with arbitrary unknown phase shifts: Direct wave-front reconstruction by blind phase shift extraction and its experimental verification

A simple wave-front reconstruction method by generalized phase-shifting interferometry (PSI) with arbitrary unknown phase shift between 0 and pi for two adjacent frames is proposed. In this method the unknown phase shifts are extracted by a noniterative algorithm with the use of the interferograms and the intensities of object and reference waves, and then the original object field can be further obtained. This method is applicable for generalized PSI of any frame number N (N >= 2) and for both the amplitude and phase objects. Its effectiveness and accuracy are verified by both the computer simulations and optical experiments. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.