Apparatus coupling an interferometer and a microscope

摘要

The present invention is related to an apparatus and a process for the visualisation of a sample, said apparatus comprising as elements at least: (i) a sample cell (2) able to contain a sample to be studied; (ii) an illumination source (1) for illuminating said sample and creating thereby an incident sample beam; (iii) a microscope (3,4) coupled to an interferometer (5) for generating an interference pattern from said incident sample beam by splitting said beam into a first output beam and a second output beam following two different optical paths in the interferometer and by recombining said output beams; (iv) imaging means (7) for detecting said interference pattern, said apparatus being characterised in that the apparatus further comprises optical tilting means located in one of the optical paths of the interferometer so as to create a tilt between the first output beam and the second output beam said tilt resulting into a shift between the first output beam and the second output beam on the imaging means (7), and the relative arrangement of said optical tilting means and the other elements of the apparatus being such as to obtain a differential interference pattern on said imaging means (7).