Microscopy of non-birefringent transmissive phase samples using Sagnac laser interferometer

A cyclic interferometer, appropriately combined with a long working distance microscope objective, is adapted for quantitative phase microscopy. In such an arrangement, the sample information, in terms of the diffracted orders emerging from the sample, is carried by both the counter propagating beams within the cyclic interferometer. However, positioning the sample close to the input/output cube beam splitter and use of a suitably converging laser beam of light as the input to the interferometer ensure that only one of the counter propagating beams carries the object information to the objective while the other beam, which serves as the reference, allows only the undiffracted component to contribute to the process of image formation. Use of suitable polarization optics renders the interferometer its polarization phase shifting property. Using the proposed arrangement, the experimental results showing the quantitative 3D phase rendering of polystyrene microspheres and micro-wells etched in glass are presented.