Introduction to Holographic Principles

This chapter presents an overview of the field of holography and is a prerequisite to the rest of the book. We are taking the approach of introducing holography by the viewpoint of diffraction optics. We will start by looking at the definition and properties of the simplest holograms: diffraction gratings. There is a lot to learn, and intuition to acquire, by understanding how these simple structures interact with light. We will then generalize the concept of diffraction to any pattern by introducing the scalar theory of diffraction. This theory allows to compute hologram for any image and location. Once these mathematic foundations are laid down, we will see the different experimental configurations to record, use, and take advantage of holograms.