Aberration compensation in a grating interferometer.

The transfer function of a grating interferometer with aberrated gratings is discussed. A geometrical configuration is developed that minimizes the aberrations of the output fringes in the interferometer, which is constructed with three hyperbolic gratings. Theoretical and experimental investigations show that it is possible to compensate for first-order aberrations of the interferometer and obtain straight output fringes if a suitable geometric configuration is used for both the recording of the grating components and the interferometer itself.