Diffraction effects in length measurements by laser interferometry

High-accuracy dimensional measurements by laser interferometers require corrections because of diffraction, which makes the effective fringe-period different from the wavelength of a plane (or spherical) wave λ0. By using a combined X-ray and optical interferometer as a tool to investigate diffraction across a laser beam, we observed wavelength variations as large as 10-8λ0. We show that they originate from the wavefront evolution under paraxial propagation in the presence of wavefront- and intensity-profile perturbations.