Misalignment correction for free-form surface in non-null interferometric testing

Unlike rotational symmetric surfaces, free-form surfaces have sophisticated degrees of freedom, therefore, are more difficult to be aligned. In this work, a practical and accurate correction method is proposed for the misalignment removal of the free-form surface in a non-null interferometric testing system based on computer modeling. The misalignment aberrations, introduced by axial location error, rotation error and non-axial attitude error, are modeled and corrected step by step. The axial and non-axial positions of the free-form surface in the computer model are adjusted from the ideal position to the misaligned one, matching the actual positions in experiment for the correction. Since the modeled position are tuned to be consistent with the actual one, all the misalignment aberrations can be removed from the test wavefront with the reconstruction algorithm. Computer simulations are displayed to verify the accuracy of the proposed method. Experimental results after alignment show basic consistency with the results of Taylor Hobson Profilometer, in which the peak-to-valley (PV) value error of the profile line is better than 1/30λ.