Synthetic-aperture experiment in the visible with on-axis digital heterodyne holography

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel on-axis digital heterodyne holography technique that enhances resolution through aperture synthesis, inspired by radar methods, enabling higher resolution in visible light holography.

Contribution

The paper presents a new heterodyne holography method that increases resolution linearly with data amount using aperture synthesis in the optical domain.

Findings

Resolution increases linearly with recorded data

Aperture synthesis improves holographic resolution

Demonstrated in visible light holography

Abstract

We have developed a new on-axis digital holographic technique, heterodyne holography. The resolution of this technique is limited mainly by the amount of data recorded on two-dimensional photodetectors, i.e., the number of pixels and their size. We demonstrate that it is possible to increase the resolution linearly with the amount of recorded data by aperture synthesis as done in the radar technique but with an optical holographic field.