In a radial shearing interferometer, a portion of the test beam is magnified and used as the reference for the tested wavefront. However, the reference portion is always off center (lateral shear), which complicates the wavefront reconstruction. A modal method for solving this problem is presented here. This method uses orthogonal Zernike polynomials and its matrix formalism to calculate the Zernike coefficient of the wavefront under test. This approach has easier implementation, is better filtering, and has a more adaptive practical situation. The corresponding mathematical formula is deduced, and a computer simulation is also made to verify operation of the algorithm. The result of simulation analysis shows that the proposed method is correct and accurate. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America
