Patent 7532330 was granted and assigned to Zygo Corporation on May, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Methods and systems for determining information about the incident angle of a beam are disclosed, the method including directing a beam having an s-polarized component and a p-polarized component to reflect from an interface at a non-normal angle, where the non-normal reflection introduces for each component a phase change upon reflection that is different for each component, and measuring an optical interference signal related to the phase change between the components of the reflected beam.