INTERFEROMETRIC METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SPATIO-TEMPORAL OPTICAL COHERENCE MODULATION

摘要

The invention relates to applications of optical interference. It is already known to reduce speckle contrast by introducing arbitrary phase shifts in the reference light beam. According to the invention, such phase shifts are not introduced arbitrarily, but systematically whereby the phase changes are synchronised with the acquisition time intervals in such a way that interference fringes can be washed out in selected regions of the beam diameter maintaining high contrast of interference fringes in the desired regions at the same time. This technique can be used for enhancing the lateral resolution in imaging techniques and the bandwidth in optical communications.

主权项

1. Method of manipulating the interference fringe contrast in a beam of light comprising the steps of
generating a spatially coherent beam of light, splitting said beam of light into a processing beam and a reference beam, directing the processing beam into an optical processing path, directing the reference beam into an optical reference path, performing a first phase shifting for a portion of the processing beam or the reference beam, generating at least one interferometric signal from the processing beam and the reference beam during a predetermined signal generation time interval, characterised in that said first phase shifting is performed about a first predetermined phase shift after a first predetermined period within the signal generation time interval.