Off-axis interferometer

An off-axis digital holographic microscope comprising:

• a spatially and temporally partially coherent light source arranged to produce a first partially coherent light beam;
• a recording plane;
• a microscope objective having a front focal plane;
• an object cell able to hold a specimen to be studied located in the front focal plane of said microscope objective, and said object cell being optically conjugated with said recording plane;
• a grating located in a plane optically conjugated with said recording plane;
• a Mach-Zehnder interferometer comprising a first beam splitter and a second beam splitter, said first beam splitter being able to split said first light beam into a second light beam and a third light beam;
• a first lens, located in the optical path of said third light beam, for focusing said third light beam on said grating;
• a second lens having the same optical axis as the first lens and located at focal distance of the grating for producing at least one non-zero order diffracted light beam, and said second beam splitter being arranged for recombining said second light beam and said diffracted light beam into a recombined beam;
• an optical stop for stopping the zero order diffracted light of said third light beam;
• recording means arranged for recording interferometric signals produced by the interaction between the second light beam and the diffracted light beam, said recording means being located in the recording plane of said interferometer;
• focusing means for focusing said recombined beam onto said recording-means;
• and
• the optical pathway of the second light beam and the third light beam being essentially equivalent.

Method for producing a fringe contrast between two non-parallel temporally partially coherent light beams, said method comprising the steps of:

• providing an incident light beam, said incident light beam being temporally partially coherent;
• focusing said incident light beam on a grating for producing at least two diffracted light beams;
• focusing said diffracted light beams to infinite for obtaining parallel diffracted light beams parallel to the incident light beam;
• focusing said parallel diffracted light beams on a recording plane, producing fringe contrast independent of the position in the recording plane, temporal coherence and spatial coherence of said parallel diffracted light beams being maintained on said recording plane.

Method for recording off-axis digital holograms comprising the steps of:

• providing a partially coherent light source producing a first partially coherent light beam;
• splitting the first partially coherent light beam into a second light beam and a third light beam;
• focusing the third light beam on a grating for splitting said third light beam into a non-zero order diffracted light beam and a zero order diffracted light beam;
• focusing the non-zero order diffracted light beam and zero order diffracted light beam to infinite in order to obtain parallel and spatially separated non-zero diffracted light beam and zero order diffracted light beam;
• stopping the zero order diffracted light beam;
• combining the non-zero order diffracted light beam with the second light beam into a recombined beam;
• focusing the recombined beam on recording means to obtain an off-axis interferogram;
• temporal coherence and spatial coherence of the non-zero order light beam and the second light beam being maintained on the recording means.