Designs of multipass optical configurations based on the use of a cube corner retroreflector in the interferometer

We describe designs of the multipass optical configurations of an interferometer with high spectral resolution with respect to 6, 12, and 24 times more optical passes than the conventional Michelson interferometer. In each design, a movable cube corner retroreflector is combined with a folding reflector group (FRG) as the interferometer's moving combination to implement the multipass optical configuration with the characteristic of surface division. Analyses reveal that when there are 12 or more optical passes, the net effect of the ray's angular deviation of the entire moving combination amounts to only the alignment error of one of the reflectors in the FRG, demonstrating the self-aligning property of the interferometer. (C) 2011 Optical Society of Americ