Mounting of reference surface for a transmission sphere

The mounting design of a reference surface for a 6-in transmission sphere is presented in this paper. To achieve highprecision measurement in interferometry, the reference wavefront error should be controlled within peak-to-valley (PV) 0.1 λ (λ=0.6328 um) for subtraction in calibration. The reference wavefront error includes the system aberration error and the irregularity of the reference surface. When a transmission sphere is well aligned, the reference wavefront error is dominated by the reference surface. The mounting of the reference surface is imperative because the surface deformation of the reference surface after mounting needs to be lower than 0.1 λ. Besides the mounting deformation, self-weight deformation is also considerable for large optics, such as 6-in reference surface in our study. Consequently, a semikinematic mounting is applied using three small contact areas to avoid over constraint. The transmission sphere in our study is vertically tested on QED aspheric stitching interferometer (ASI), and then the trefoil aberration is occurred. There are two methods to decrease surface deformation after mounting, including deformation correction using computer control optical surfacing (CCOS) and adding soft supporting between hard mounting. In this study, three soft supports are used to share the loads of three rigid supports and then to minimize surface deformation due to gravity. Mounting design and experiments are described in this paper. Finally, the reference wavefront error of the prototype is successfully restrained within 0.1 λ in measurement.