Ultrastable Holographic Cyclic Interferometer

ABSTRACT We propose to use an off-axis zone plate, as beam splitter and as beam recombiner, to set a cyclic interferometer. We show that this optical device can be tuned to generate, with high stability, cosinusoidal gratings and/or cosinusoidal zone plates. 1. INTRODUCTION Several modern optical devices incorporate holographically generated optical elements; either for substituting conventional optical elements, or for introducing novel techniques for manipulating light.In particular, in the field of interferometry there are attemps to use diffracting ele­ ments for testing large optics; without using large beam splitters1"^.The aim of this work is to suggest, and to experimentally verify,…