Calibration of absolute planarity flats: generalized iterative approach

Absolute planarity measurement with interferometric data and iterative surface recovering approaches is briefly reviewed. Extension to the case of multiple measurements is outlined, and demonstration with synthetic data is provided. A generalized approach is finally presented, making use of operators representing the manipulations occurred with the surfaces taking part in the generation of the interferograms. The potential advantages of the new interferogram processing technique are pointed out. (C) 2012 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).