Shot Noise in Digital Holography

TL;DR

This paper analyzes shot noise in heterodyne digital holography, revealing that for weak signals, the dominant noise source is shot noise on the reference beam, equivalent to one photoelectron per pixel across the entire image sequence.

Contribution

It provides a quantitative analysis of shot noise in heterodyne holography, highlighting the dominant noise source for weak signals.

Findings

Shot noise dominates in weak signal conditions.

Noise level corresponds to one photoelectron per pixel.

Analysis applies to off-axis heterodyne holography.

Abstract

We discuss on noise in heterodyne holography in an off-axis configuration. We show that, for a weak signal, the noise is dominated by the shot noise on the reference beam. This noise corresponds to an equivalent noise on the signal beam of one photoelectron per pixel, for the whole sequence of images used to build the digital hologram.