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High-accuracy tilt or roll angle measurement is required for a variety of engineering and scientific applications. A cyclic interferometer with multiple reflections has been developed to measure small tilt angles. To accomplish this task, a novel and simple method, phase shift by polarization, was developed. The results of these studies show that the multiple reflection cyclic interferometers can be used to measure object tilts on the order of 0.2 nano-radians. We develop the theory for polarization phase step and show that accurate measurements can be made with the cyclic interferometer.

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The wavefront aberrations induced by misalignments due to decentration and tilt of an optical component in an optical measurement system are presented. A Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor is used to measure various aberrations caused due to the shifting of the axis and tilt of a lens in the path of an optical wavefront. One of the lenses in an optical system is decentered in the transverse direction and is tilted by using a rotational stage. For each step, wavefront data have been taken and data were analyzed up to the fourth order consisting of 14 Zernike terms along with peak-to-valley and root mean square values. Theoretical simulations using ray tracing have been carried out and compared with experimental values. The results are presented along with the discussion on tolerance limits for both decentration and tilt.

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