The present invention relates to an optical
system and a method for chromatic
confocal spectral-domain
optical coherence tomography or for chromatic
confocal two-beam
interferometry. The optical
system comprises a multispectral
light source unit configured to generate a plurality of spatially coherent multispectral light beams with spectra having a respective
centroid wavenumbers, an achromatic focusing unit configured such that in at least a paraxial region around a
common point located on an
optical axis at the output of the achromatic focusing unit, the wavefronts of the respective spatially coherent multispectral light beams have different radii of curvatures, a chromatic
confocal dual-beam interferometer having an non-zero
optical path difference arranged downstream of the multispectral
light source unit and a detection unit for detecting light returned from the dual-beam interferometer. The reference arm of the double-beam interferometer is configured to be achromatic and the object arm to have chromatic depth slitting of foci. In the reference arm, a plurality of depth separated reference light spots are formed. In the object arm, a plurality of at least partially colinear and overlapping multispectral stretches of
diffraction limited light spots extended in a
depth direction of the object arm is formed. The light reflected by a current sharply focused
diffraction limited object
light spot of each of the multispectral stretches of
diffraction limited light spots is combined with a respective reference
light spot, is confocally discriminated by a confocal discrimination unit of the detection unit and subsequently detected by at least one
spectrometer, evaluation dual-beam interferometer or fast
detector detects the confocally discriminated light.