Measurement of large plane surface shapes by connecting small-aperture interferograms

We propose a method to obtain the shape of a large plane surface by connecting phase distributions measured by a small-aperture interferometer. These separately measured phase distributions cannot be connected directly because the object will tilt or have vertical displacement during the measurements. To correct these errors, the measurements are made so that the adjacent interferograms have common areas, and these interferograms are connected to minimize the difference of the phase distributions in the common areas. A matrix equation is derived to obtain coefficients to correct tilt and vertical displacement, and the accuracy of connection increases in proportion to an exponent of 1.5 of the width of the common area.