Phasor Chart for CPI-Analysis

As we saw in the previous discussion it is usually a challenging task to obtain an overview of the output from a common-path interferometer (CPI) for a given input phase distribution and the set of filter parameters (A, B, θ) and K (η). We therefore include a brief description of a graphical phasor-chart method for CPI-analysis that we have developed and will discuss how to apply it. We explain how this original phasor chart can be reconfigured for use with the combined filter parameter, C, that we introduced in the preceding section and show how both types of phasor charts can be used as powerful visualization tools in the analysis of any given CPI. The primary role of the graphical phasor chart is to illustrate the relationship between the intensity at the output of the CPI and the size of the input phase perturbation, in other words, the phase-to-intensity mapping for a given set of filter parameters.