Shear interferometry for terahertz wavefront sensing

We propose a new solution for sensing a terahertz (THz) wavefront based on a THz reference-less shear interferometer. The key component of the experimental configuration of the proposed interferometer is a THz Ronchi phase grating (RPG). The RPG is custom designed and fabricated for a 0.28 THz source using mechanical milling on a block of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) with a computer numerical control (CNC) machine. It acts as a shearing element that generates two diffraction orders, thereby creating two laterally shifted copies of the investigated wavefront in the sensor plane where a THz camera is placed. The direction of the shear can be varied by rotating the grating. Since the grating is a phase grating, the diffraction efficiency is very high. The approach is verified experimentally by demonstrating interferograms of a spherical wave and wavefront reconstruction from five different shears using a gradient-based iterative process.