Laser Scanning Microscopy for Tomographic Imaging of Roughness and Point Absorbers in Optical Surfaces

Abstract

High-precision laser interferometric instruments require optical surfaces with a close to perfect contour, as well as low scattering and absorption. Especially point absorbers are problematic because they heat up at high optical intensities and locally deform the otherwise flat surface, resulting in correlations between absorption and contour. Here, we present a laser scanning microscopy approach for the reconstruction of the two complementary images of an optical surface. The 'phase image' is related to the surface profile including roughness. The 'loss image' localizes point absorbers. Our experiment achieves a sensitivity of up to (3.1 $\pm$ 1.4) fm/$\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$ and a (5.29 $\pm$ 0.06) $\mathrm{\mu}$m lateral resolution. The two images show correlations for some features proving the particular strength of our tomographic approach, which should help further improving optical surfaces or to understand dynamic processes of surface physics.