Research Article Vol. 57, No.

4 / 1 February 2018 / Applied Optics 781

Characterization of the pinhole diffraction based

on the waveguide effect in a point diffraction
interferometer
CHEN WANG, YONGYING YANG,* YAO LI, YUANKAI CHEN, AND JIAN BAI
State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University,
38 Zheda Road, Hangzhou 310027, China
*Corresponding author: chuyyy@zju.edu.cn

Received 28 September 2017; revised 24 December 2017; accepted 27 December 2017; posted 2 January 2018 (Doc. ID 308098);
published 30 January 2018

The nearly ideal spherical wavefront generated by pinhole diffraction is the key factor determining the achievable
accuracy in point diffraction interferometers (PDIs), as it is employed as the reference wavefront. A comprehen-
sive characterization of the diffraction of a pinhole at the operating-wavelength scale that is normally adopted in
PDI is given. The incident light is coupled into the pinhole, which functions as a cylindrical waveguide, and is
diffracted in the end. The field in the pinhole is analyzed based on mode theory and the diffraction wave in the far
field is derived from the field equivalence principle. The diffraction wave is characterized by the light transmit-
tance, the polarization, and the wavefront aberration, which are all determined by the properties of the mode in
the pinhole. The diameter of the pinhole should not be smaller than 0.6λ to make the transmittance sufficient.
With a linearly polarized incident light, the diffraction wave is elliptically polarized, and the wavefront aberration
is dominated by the astigmatic component. The method explicitly reveals the physical mechanism of pinhole
diffraction. The analytic solutions are fast to compute, easy to analyze, and intuitively show the diffractive proper-
ties of the pinhole. The conclusions are significant for insight into the nature of pinhole diffraction and provide
theoretical reference for analysis of numerical results and the design of PDI systems. © 2018 Optical Society of
America

OCIS codes: (050.1940) Diffraction; (120.3180) Interferometry; (120.5050) Phase measurement; (260.1960) Diffraction theory;
(260.2110) Electromagnetic optics.

https://doi.org/10.1364/AO.57.000781

1. INTRODUCTION high measurement accuracy, precise characterization of the

The development of optical fabrication places an ultrahigh
requirement on optical testing precision. The achievable preci-
sion of an optical interferometer is determined by the accuracy
of the reference wavefront. As for the traditional interferometer,
it is generally limited by the surface accuracy of a reference stan-
dard lens [1]. As a highly accurate measurement for wavefront
metrology, the point diffraction interferometer (PDI) [2–8] has
been developed to overcome the accuracy limitation in tradi-
tional interferometers, enabling measurement precision on
the order of a subnanometer. The PDI employs a nearly ideal
spherical wavefront generated by pinhole diffraction as the
reference wavefront and is expected to be a powerful tool
for high-precision optical testing. Several factors can give rise
to measurement error in a PDI, and the diffraction reference
wavefront is the key factor that determines the achievable
accuracy in the measurement [7,9–12]. In order to achieve
properties of the diffraction wave is required.
Light diffraction by a hole in a screen remained the object of
scientific study for centuries, as an exact solution of its optics is
extremely difficult. The pinhole diffraction has attracted scien-
tific interest for its broad application for science and technology
[13,14]. So far, various methods have been proposed to analyze
the diffraction wave in PDIs, which can mainly be classified to
the scalar diffraction theory and the vector diffraction theory
employing the numerical method of the electromagnetic field.
According to the scalar diffraction theory, the pinhole was
treated as an aperture that is described as a transmittance func-
tion to multiply the incident optical field, so the diffraction
wave is a result of spatial filtering of the incident light
[2,3,7,10]. The scalar method, which is only valid for the pin-
hole size, is much larger than the operating wavelength, as it
ignored the screen’s influence on the field distribution.

1559-128X/18/040781-07 Journal © 2018 Optical Society of America

 782 Vol. 57, No. 4 / 1 February 2018 / Applied Optics Research Article

Bethe treated the diffraction of electromagnetic waves by a cir- (a) Incident Diffraction
cular hole—small compared with the wavelength in a perfectly wave wave
conducting plane screen of zero thickness, theoretically [15]. In Mode
his work, Bethe made some simplifications based on the
assumption that the hole is very small compared with the wave- Focusing
length. In a PDI, the finite thickness of the screen has to be lens
considered. So to realize the accurate estimation of the diffrac- Reflected
Pinhole wave
tion wavefront of the pinhole comparable to the operating Ref.
wavelength, the method based on the numerical simulation of wave
Relay lens
electromagnetic field is proposed [9,11,12,16], in which the Test
wave
light propagation through the pinhole is numerically calculated
and then transformed to the far field, such as the finite- Spheric CCD
difference time domain (FDTD) method. The pinhole diffrac- surface
under test
tion is simulated with the numerical method of electromagnetic PZT
field in the first step, in which the near-field distribution of (b)
pinhole diffraction can be obtained. In the second step, the Front
surface
near-to-far field transform based on Huygens’ principle is car- Incident Couple Mode
ried out to get the diffraction wave distribution in the far field. wave
The three-dimensional simulation is time-consuming and Reflected
Propagation
costly, and it is highly difficult to realize the required exceed- wave condition
ingly high accuracy, particularly for the visible-light [10,11]. False
Back True
In this paper, the diffraction by a pinhole at the operating- surface Cutoff
wavelength scale in an opaque metal screen is analyzed based on Diffracted Diffract
wave
rigorous electromagnetic theory. The incident light is coupled Propagate
into the pinhole, which functions as a cylindrical waveguide
and is diffracted in the end. The field in the pinhole, which Fig. 1. (a) Principle of PDI; (b) physical process of pinhole
is determined by the interaction between the sidewall and diffraction.
the electromagnetic field, is analyzed based on mode theory,
while the diffraction wave in the far field is derived from
the field equivalence principle. The diffraction wave is charac- diffraction wave is separated into two parts: one serves as the
terized on the light transmittance, the polarization, and the reference wave, while the other serves as the test wave. The test
wavefront aberration, which are all determined by the proper- wave (solid line) illuminates the spheric surface under test and
ties of the mode in the pinhole. The pinhole size should not be is reflected by it (dashed line), then reflected at the pinhole sub-
smaller than 0.6λ to make the transmittance sufficient. With a strate, and finally combines with the reference wave (solid line).
linearly polarized incident light, the diffraction wave is ellipti- The two waves pass through the relay lens and form the fringe
cally polarized, and the wavefront aberration is dominated by pattern on the charge-coupled device (CCD).
the astigmatic component. The method explicitly reveals the In order to obtain a high-quality diffraction wave, the
physical mechanism of pinhole diffraction. The analytic solu- opaque metal membrane should be optically thick enough
tions are fast to compute, easy to analyze, and intuitively show to attenuate the light around the pinhole. The incident wave
the diffractive properties of the pinhole. The conclusions are is incident on the pinhole leading to the reflected wave and the
significant for insight into the nature of pinhole diffraction diffracted wave. The pinhole functions as a cylindrical wave-
and provide theoretical reference for analysis of numerical re- guide [17], and the physical mechanism is shown in Fig. 1(b),
sults and the design of PDI systems. which can be divided into three steps: couple, propagation,
The rest of the paper is organized as following. Section 2 and diffraction. In the first step, the couple of incident light
describes the system layout of a typical PDI for testing spherical into the waveguide modes happens on the front surface of
surfaces. The mode theory to derive the field in the hole and the the pinhole, depending strongly on the matching degree be-
field equivalence principle for calculating the diffraction wave tween the field of the incident light and that of the waveguide
in the far field are also discussed. Section 3 shows the results modes. The second step is propagation, which means that the
derived based on the theory discussed in Section 2, such as the modes for which the propagating condition is satisfied will
field distribution of the cross section in the hole, the transmit- propagate through the pinhole, while the others attenuate ex-
tance, and the diffraction wave in the far field. Some conclud- ponentially, and the energy carried by these modes reflects back
ing remarks are summarized in Section 4. eventually. In the third step, the fields diffract and give rise to a
spherical wave at the exit on the back surface of the pinhole.
2. SYSTEM AND THEORY B. Mode Theory
A. System Layout The fields of the modes in the pinhole are confined in the vicin-
A typical PDI configuration is shown in Fig. 1(a). The incident ity of the guiding structure and propagate along the guiding
light is focused on the pinhole by a focusing lens, and the trans- direction, which are determined by the interaction between
mitted wave is diffracted into a nearly ideal spherical wave. The the sidewall and the light [18,19]. In order to shut out light
 Research Article Vol. 57, No. 4 / 1 February 2018 / Applied Optics 783

y The substrate C. Diffraction Fields Based on the Field Equivalence

Principle
Observation In electromagnetic theory, the uniqueness theorem indicates that
r
( r,ϕ , z ) ϕ φ x R point
R
for electromagnetic field problems the solution in a region is
r θ unique when the sources and the tangential electric or magnetic
a ( R, θ , φ ) fields are prescribed over the whole boundary. Huygens’ principle
z
The screen states that the fields in a region V are completely determined by
the tangential fields over the surface S enclosing V. The fields at
The pinhole
the boundary surface act as the sources so that the fields at an
Fig. 2. Coordinate system for pinhole diffraction. observation point can be expressed in terms of them [18].
As for our problem, the diffraction fields from the pinhole
are determined and uniquely determined from the knowledge
around the pinhole, the membrane material should be a highly of the fields over the back surface of the pinhole. The field
absorptive medium with a high extinction coefficient in which equivalence principle [19] states that the aperture fields can
the propagation of light is characterized by rapid extinction, so be replaced by equivalent electric and magnetic surface cur-
the screen can be idealized as a perfect conductor screen. rents, which become the sources of the diffraction fields.
As the pinhole has a cylindrical symmetry, the cylindrical The diffraction fields can be computed with the help of the
coordinate system defined in Fig. 2 is used to describe the fields field equivalence principle, which makes the problem the radi-
in the pinhole. Consider a pinhole of radius a and the incident ation fields of given sources. The equivalent surface currents are
light with angular frequency ω. Each mode satisfies the ⇀ ⇀
Helmholtz equation and the appropriate boundary conditions J  n̂ × H
imposed by the guiding structures. In the case of the cylindrical ⇀ ⇀
waveguide, the azimuthal component of the electric field, and J m  −n̂ × E ; (3)
the radial components of the magnetic field are required to be where n̂ is a unit vector normal to the back surface of the pin-
zero around the boundary. As the waves are propagating along hole pointing to the far field, which we are interested in. There
the z direction, the z dependence of all field vectors is written as is an alternative form of the field equivalence principle in which
exp i
ωt − βz, which is called the propagation factor. The sol- only the electric fields are required. They are
utions can be classified to TE and TM modes, and each mode is ⇀
characterized by two indices, m and n. Each mode has two ori- J 0
entations, related to the horizontal mode and the vertical mode. ⇀ ⇀
The electric fields of TM modes are as follows, with the propa- J m  −2
n̂ × E : (4)
gation factor exp i
ωt − βz omitted: As the boundary condition that the tangential electric fields
vanish on the surface of the screen, the equivalent magnetic



⇀TM cos mφ iβ 0 cos mφ currents only exist in the area of the pinhole. This form of
E mn  E 0 ẑJ m
kc r − E 0 r̂ J m
kc r the field equivalence principle is more appropriate and consis-
sin mφ kc sin mφ

 tent with our problem, because only the electric fields over the
iβm sin mφ hole area are required, which are modes in the hole.
 E 0 φ̂ 2 J m
k c r ; (1)
kc r − cos mφ As shown in Fig. 2, the back surface of the pinhole is taken
to be the x–y plane, and the origin is set in the middle of the
aperture. The spherical coordinate system is adopted to de-
where J m and J m0 are the mth order Bessel function and its
scribe the diffraction wave in the far field. Based on the
derivative with respect to the argument, and kc  umn ∕a,
Kottler formulas of radiation field, the diffraction fields are
where umn denotes the nth root of J m . ε and μ are the permit- I
tivity and permeability in the pinhole. The electric fields of TE ⇀ ⇀ ⇀ ⇀
E
R   2∇G ×
ẑ × E
r dA; (5)
modes are
⇀ ⇀

 where r indicates the points on the back surface, while R in-
⇀TE iωμm sin mφ
E mn  H 0 r̂ 2 J m
k c r dicates the observation points. G is the scalar Green’s function
kc r − cos mφ ⇀ ⇀

 for isotropic media G  exp
−ikjR
⇀ ⇀
− r j
, where k is the wave vector
iωμ 0 cos mφ 4πjR − r j
 H 0 φ̂ J
k r ; (2) ⇀
kc m c sin mφ
and the gradient operator ∇ acts on R . As we are interested in
~ can be
fields far away, the far-field approximation ∇G ≈ −i kG
0 0
where kc  umn ∕a, in which umn denotes the nth root of J m0 .
adopted, where k~  kR̂ and R̂ is the unit vector pointing to the
For modes characterized by m and n, m is associated with the
observation point. The replacements have no significant effects
number of variations in the φ̂ direction and n with the number
owing to their low sensitivity to the wave amplitude only, while
of variations in the r̂ direction. The propagation wavenumber
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ⇀ ⇀
β  ω2 με − k2c characterizes the propagation of the relevant jR − r j in the phase term is kept for its high sensitivity. The
mode in the hole, which depends on the guiding structure. diffraction fields are
 784 Vol. 57, No. 4 / 1 February 2018 / Applied Optics Research Article

⇀ ⇀
I ⇀ ⇀
1 ~
E
R   ik × −ẑ × E
r  exp
−ikjR~ − ~rj∕jR~ − ~rjdA:
2π
(6)
In the far field, the electric field should be transverse to the
propagation direction, implying that the solution in terms of
spherical components allows the evaluation of the wavefront
sphericity to be made conveniently by consideration only of
the nonradial propagation field.
The calculation of the diffraction field requires the knowl-
edge of the fields over the back surface of the pinhole. As the
tangential electric fields vanish over the screen, the fields over
the back surface of the pinhole are considered only over the
pinhole area, which are the relevant modes according to the
Fig. 4. Electric field distribution based on FDTD simulation.
mode theory discussed above. Substituting Eq. (2) into Linearly y-polarized light normally incident, pinhole diameter
Eq. (6), the diffraction fields relevant to the mode TEmn can D  λ, screen thickness H  2λ. (a) E x in x–y plane in hole;
be derived, which are (b) E y in x–y plane in hole; (c) E y in y–z plane; (d) phase of E y
in y–z plane; (e) E y in x–z plane; (f) phase of E y in x–z plane.
θ
R; θ; ϕ  A sin mϕ · F mn
R; θ;
E far 1

ϕ
R; θ; ϕ  A cos mϕ · F mn
R; θ;

E far (7)
2

3. RESULTS
A. Fields in the Pinhole
F 1mn
R; θ When a linearly polarized light is normally incident on a pin-
ZZ hole, the optical energy is coupled into the modes for which
 J m−1
kc r cos
m − 1φ  J m1
kc r cos
m  1φ m  1 according to the field symmetry. Figure 3 shows the
distribution of the electric fields of TE11 over the cross section,
× exp
−ikl ∕l · rdrdφ; based on mode theory. The asymmetry arises from the boun-
dary conditions of Maxwell’s equations: electric field compo-
F 2mn
R; θ
ZZ nents parallel to the wall of the pinhole are continuous
 cos θ J m−1
kc r cos
m − 1φ − J m1
k c r cos
m  1φ across the boundary, while components perpendicular to the
wall are discontinuous. According to FDTD simulation with
× exp
−ikl ∕l · rdrdφ; (8) a linearly polarized light that is normally incident on a pinhole
whose size is comparable to the operating wavelength, the dis-
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi tribution of the electric fields over the cross section of the pin-
where A  − 4πk kωμ
c
H 0 , l  R 2  r 2 − 2Rr sin θ cos φ. The hole is derived, as shown in Fig. 4. The simulation parameters
electric components in the far field E far far
θ and E ϕ are only modu- are set in this way so that the space step is set to λ∕50, sim-
lated on their amplitudes along the azimuth angle ϕ, whose ulation volume is set to 10λ along the x and y direction, and 5λ
relations correspond, respectively, to sin mϕ and cos mϕ. along the z direction. The perfectly matched layer (PML)
The phases of E far θ and E ϕ are invariable along ϕ; in other
far
boundary condition is adopted, with reflectivity set to 10−7 .
words, the phases of the two electric components are rotation- It is obvious that the fields based on FDTD simulation match
ally symmetric. The functional relations of the two electric up to the field distribution of TE11 over the cross section. For
components along the polar angle θ are different, given by the pinhole comparable to the operating wavelength normally
F 1mn and F 2mn , respectively. adopted in visible-light PDI, the fundamental mode TE11
dominates the field in it.
B. Transmittance of the Pinhole
A mode will propagate only if the propagation wavenumber is
real-valued, or the mode becomes evanescent and attenuates
exponentially along the z direction. A mode with a cutoff
frequency ωc and a cutoff wavelength λc will propagate only
when the propagation condition ω > ωc or λ < λc is satisfied.
For the pinhole as a hollow cylindrical waveguide, its cutoff
wavelength is
λTM 0
cutoff  2πa∕umn ; λTE
cutoff  2πa∕umn : (9)
At any given frequency, only a finite number of modes can
Fig. 3. Electric field distribution ⇀of TE11 based on mode theory. propagate in a waveguide with a given size. When the pinhole
(a) E x , (b) E y , (c) E r , (d) E φ , (e) jE j, (f ) the electric field line. diameter is too small, none of the modes can propagate. As the
 Research Article
TE11
TM 01TE
21
TE01TM 11
Cutoff TE31
Region TM 21
TE12
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 around the cutoff condition. This phenomenon and also the
Pinhole Diameter /λ
Fig. 5. Mode spectrum for cylindrical waveguide.
pinhole diameter increases, the fundamental mode TE11 can be
supported first when its propagation condition is satisfied.
Then more modes can propagate sequentially with the increas-
ing size of the pinhole (Fig. 5). In Fig. 1(a), when the incident
light is focused onto the front surface of the pinhole, the optical
energy is coupled into the modes according to the matching
degree of the field of the incident light and that of the modes.
Then only the modes that satisfy the propagation condition can
propagate and diffract at the exit. According to the diffraction
mechanism, the transmittance is
X j j j
T  ηc ηp ηd : (10)
j
ηc is the coupling efficiency as the fraction of total power in
j
the incident light, which is coupled into the jth mode, while ηd
is the diffraction efficiency, and both should be derived from
numerical calculation for the transmission through the pinhole.
j
ηc depends on the matching degree of the incident field and the
jth mode field. When the pinhole diameter is comparable to the
operating wavelength, the normal incident wave on the pinhole
j θ and E ϕ are modulated on
area is nearly uniform, so ηc can be considered roughly propor-
j
tional to the pinhole area. ηp is the propagation efficiency of the
jth mode characterized by the propagation wavenumber β.
As the pinhole size decreases, more modes are cut off,
j
which leads to a significant decrease of relevant ηp and the light
transmittance.
The transmittance of pinhole diffraction is simulated by
FDTD to verify the analysis above, in which the plane wave
is linearly polarized and normally incident. As a plane wave
is incident, the transmittance T is defined as the diffraction
power normalized by the incident power over the hole area,
which is more meaningful for the situation.
Figure 6 shows the simulation results where the transmit-
tance is presented as a function of the diameter of the pinhole
for a screen thickness equal to the diameter. The results
given by the numerical simulation shows the transmittance
through the pinhole is drastically reduced with the pinhole size
decreasing when the diameter is less than half the wavelength,
Fig. 6. Transmittance of pinhole diffraction by FDTD simulation.
Vol. 57, No. 4 / 1 February 2018 / Applied Optics 785
which arises from the cutoff effect. The same results have been
concluded by other authors [16] using numerical methods of
electromagnetic fields. The transmittance goes to 1 when the
diameter is large compared to the wavelength, as observed in
Fig. 6, while the transmission presents a maximum up to 1.4
local maxima and minima can be attributed to the resonance
due to interference between waves reflected from the front and
back surface of the pinhole [17,20]. When the pinhole is very
small, the transmittance through the pinhole is significantly
low, and the light power is not sufficient, which will reduce
accuracy. The pinhole diameter should not be smaller than
0.6λ to sustain the propagating of the fundamental mode
(Fig. 5), which provides an important theoretical reference
for the design of the PDI system.
C. Properties of the Diffraction Wave
When the pinhole diameter is comparable to the operating
wavelength, the normal incident wave on the pinhole area is
nearly uniform, which can be considered as a plane wave.
When a linearly polarized light is normally incident on a
pinhole, the optical energy is coupled into the modes for
which m  1. When the pinhole diameter is in the range
0.59λ < D < 1.22λ, only TE11 mode can propagate owing
to the cutoff effect. For the pinhole comparable to the operat-
ing wavelength normally adopted in visible-light PDI, the fun-
damental mode TE11 dominates the field in it.
In the following, the diffraction fields of TE11 are analyzed
in detail. According to the conclusion in Section 2, the dif-
fracted electric components E far far
their amplitudes along ϕ by sin ϕ and cos ϕ, respectively, while
the functional relations of the two electric components along θ
are given by F 111 and F 211 . Figure 7 shows the distribution of
θ and E ϕ along θ, while the far-field position is set on the
E far far
sphere with R  105 λ. As shown in Fig. 7(a), with a decrease of
the pinhole size, the diffraction angle increases. At a fixed diam-
eter, the diffraction angle of E far
ϕ is bigger, because the effective
cross section of E φ is smaller owing to the boundary condition
(Fig. 3). The discrepancy becomes more obvious when the pin-
hole diameter decreases, which leads to more asymmetry. As
shown in Fig. 7(b), the deviations of the phases of E far θ and
ϕ from that of the center increase with the increase of θ
E far
and the pinhole diameter.
The electric components E far far
θ and E ϕ are studied above;
then, the total electric fields are considered synthesized by
the two components. Figure 8(a) shows the normalized inten-
sity distribution in the far field of TE11 , with the diameter
Fig. 7. Distribution of the far-field components E far far
θ and E ϕ of
TE11 along θ. (a) Normalized amplitude; (b) phase distribution.
 786 Vol. 57, No. 4 / 1 February 2018 / Applied Optics
Fig. 8. Normalized light intensity distribution, (a) In NA  0.5;
(b) along different θ.
D  λ, the far-field position R  105 λ and NA  0.5. The
intensity distribution is not rotationally symmetric, which be-
comes more obvious as θ increases [Fig. 8(b)]. The asymmetry
arises from that: for ϕ  0; π, the field has only the azimuthal
component E farϕ , and for ϕ  0.5π; 1.5π, the field has only the
polar component E farθ , while over other areas, the field depends
on both. This also leads to the polarization properties: the light
field is linearly polarized along ϕ  0; 0.5π; π; 1.5π, while
among the other area it is elliptically polarized because of
the phase difference between the two components. As the phase
difference is very small, the light field can be treated as linearly
polarized light. The field along the principal axis synthesized by
the two components is adopted for the wavefront evaluation.
Figure 9 shows the diffraction wavefront deviation from the
best-fit sphere in NA  0.5 and its Zernike coefficients.
The astigmatism dominates the wavefront irregularity. When
a linearly polarized light is normal incident on a pinhole com-
parable to the operating wavelength, the diffraction wave re-
sembles an astigmatism-like wavefront, which is also
revealed in the numerical simulation [9]. The wavefront
deviation arises from the rotational asymmetry of the field dis-
tribution in the pinhole, which originates from the interaction
of the light and the pinhole wall. Actually, when the hole is
bigger to sustain more modes, the diffraction field results from
the contribution of all the relevant modes, while each of them
can be derived from Eq. (7), but the relevant coefficients can
only be derived from numerical calculation for the transmission
through the pinhole.
As shown in Fig. 1(a), the PDI system has a symmetric
structure as the surface under test, and the detection optics
are placed symmetrically with the optical axis of the focusing
lens. The test wave and the reference wave that form the in-
terferogram are two parts reflection-symmetric in the diffrac-
tion wave [Fig. 9(a)]. The wavefront error with the
Fig. 9. (a) Wavefront deviation from the best-fit sphere and (b) the
Zernike coefficients.
Research Article
reflection-symmetry such as astigmatism does not make a mea-
surement error because the measurement error is the difference
between the test wavefront and the reference wavefront, and
the symmetric components are canceled. The measurement er-
ror is mainly caused by the nonideal factors in a practical sit-
uation, such as the roundness error of the pinhole, the focus
displacement of the test wave [21], and so on.
4. CONCLUSION
As a highly accurate measurement for wavefront metrology, a
PDI employs a nearly ideal spherical wavefront generated by
pinhole diffraction as the reference wavefront. The diffraction
wavefront is the key factor determining the achievable accuracy,
which should be characterized precisely. Various methods have
been proposed to analyze the diffraction wave in a PDI, which
can be mainly classified as the scalar diffraction theory and the
numerical method of the electromagnetic field. The scalar dif-
fraction theory is only valid for a pinhole much larger than the
operating wavelength and can provide poor significance for our
problem. While the numerical method is time-consuming and
difficult to realize, it requires exceedingly high accuracy because
of the numerical error in processing.
In this paper, a comprehensive characterization of the dif-
fraction of a pinhole at the operating-wavelength scale is given
based on rigorous electromagnetic theory. The method explic-
itly reveals the physical mechanism of pinhole diffraction. The
pinhole functions as a cylindrical waveguide, and the diffraction
problem can be divided into three steps: couple, propagation,
and diffraction. First, the incident light is coupled into the
waveguide modes on the front surface, depending strongly
on the matching degree between the field of the incident light
and that of the waveguide modes. Then, the modes which sat-
isfy the propagating condition will propagate, while the others
attenuate exponentially. Finally, the fields diffract and give rise
to a spherical wave at the exit on the back surface. The field in
the pinhole, which is determined by the interaction between
the sidewall and the electromagnetic field, is analyzed based
on mode theory, while the diffraction wave in the far field is
derived from the field equivalence principle.
The analytic solutions are fast to compute, easy to analyze,
and can intuitively show the diffractive properties of the pin-
hole. This method demands much less computational effort
than the numerical method based on the FDTD method.
The numerical simulation of pinhole diffraction based on
FDTD includes two steps: FDTD simulation for the near field
and the near-to-far field transform for the far field. With the
simulation parameters set in the way described in Section 3, it
takes up to an hour to get the diffraction wave by 40 × 40 sam-
pling points on the server with 32 GB memory and 12 cores
whose frequency is up to 3.5 GHz, while with our method, the
calculation just needs about 2 min on a laptop with a CPU of 2
cores and 4 GB memory.
The diffraction wave is characterized on the light transmit-
tance, the polarization, and the wavefront aberration, which are
all determined by the properties of the mode in the pinhole.
The light transmittance depends on both the coupling effi-
ciency and the propagation efficiency. As the pinhole size de-
creases, the light transmission is significantly reduced when the
 Research Article
pinhole diameter is so small that all the modes are cut off. The
pinhole size should not be smaller than 0.6λ to make the trans-
mittance sufficient. With a linearly polarized light incident on a
pinhole comparable to the operating wavelength, which is nor-
mally adopted in a visible-light PDI, the fundamental mode
TE11 dominates the field in it. This leads the diffraction wave
to be elliptically polarized and the wavefront aberration to be
dominated by the astigmatic component.
The results are consistent with those derived by numerical
simulation, but the solutions derived in an analytic form are
significant for the analysis of pinhole diffraction and produce
physical insight into the properties of the diffraction wave. The
results also provide an important reference for analysis of the
results by numerical method and design of the PDI system.
Funding. National Natural Science Foundation of China
(NSFC) (11275172, 61627825); State Key Laboratory of
MOI Innovation Program (MOI2015 B06).
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