Optical Holography

Since its conception by Dennis Gabor in 1948, holography has become an important tool for a variety of traditional disciplines in optics such as imaging, interferometry, optical testing, and optical component design. This chapter provides a framework of tools that are useful for analyzing holograms and developing designs that incorporate them. In general, holograms are used either to store information such as an image or data from a spatial light modulator or as optical elements to perform different operations such as focusing, filtering, polarization control, etc. In digital holography, an optical interference pattern is recorded on a digital camera and is computationally reconstructed for display on a computer monitor. In computer generated holography, the object and reference waves are implemented by computational methods and do not require physical realization. Finally, the chapter highlights several pervasive and concepts to indicate the scope of possible applications.