High-flexibility single-shot wavefront measurement with dual-lateral shearing interferometry

In this study, we propose a dual-lateral shearing interferometry system based on a cyclic configuration for realtime wavefront measurement. This system effectively separates a single raw interferogram containing multiple arbitrary shearing directions by utilizing an optimized algorithm that integrates two-dimensional variational modal decomposition (2D-VMD) and a four-step phase-shifting technique, along with the application of partial differential Zernike polynomial fitting. We quantitatively reconstruct the original plane and spherical wavefront. The results indicate that the static wavefront errors achievable with the proposed method are 0.0262 nm for peak-to-valley (PV) and 0.0083 nm for root mean square (RMS), reflecting exceptional precision. Furthermore, the imaging system enables high-precision, real-time measurement of distorted wavefronts while offering significant flexibility in interferogram modulation parameters such as density and inclination. This approach presents an effective solution for dynamic detection in the realm of self-referencing interferometry.