(DH) Noise and Signal scaling factors in Digital Holography in week illumination: relationship with Shot Noise

TL;DR

This study investigates how signal and noise scale in digital holography under weak illumination, demonstrating that the signal-to-background ratio inversely relates to temporal and spatial bandwidths, with experimental results aligning with shot noise theory.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental validation of shot noise limits in digital holography under weak illumination conditions, linking noise scaling to bandwidth parameters.

Findings

Signal-to-background ratio decreases with increasing bandwidths.

Experimental noise matches Monte Carlo shot noise predictions.

Holography performance is fundamentally limited by shot noise.

Abstract

We have performed off axis heterodyne holography with very weak illumination by recording holograms of the object with and without object illumination in the same acquisition run. We have experimentally studied, how the reconstructed image signal (with illumination) and noise background (without) scale with the holographic acquisition and reconstruction parameters that are the number of frames, and the number of pixels of the reconstruction spatial filter. The first parameter is related to the frequency bandwidth of detection in time, the second one to the bandwidth in space. The signal to background ratio varies roughly like the inverse of the bandwidth in time and space. We have also compared the noise background with the theoretical shot noise background calculated by Monte Carlo simulation. The experimental and Monte Carlo noise background agree very well together.