Digital holography with an engineered reference beam

Off-axis digital holography is particularly useful for wavefront and remote sensing since it allows for amplitude and phase measurement via a single-shot acquisition of complex optical fields, enabling accurate reconstruction of distant objects. Separating the reference and signal beams spatially shifts the interference cross-terms, facilitating filtering and extraction of the image-bearing term. In this study, we present our simulation model and results that explore the efficiency of holographic detection in the off-axis image plane recording geometry (IPRG) using Hermite Gaussian (HG) and Laguerre Gaussian (LG) modal reference beams. The results show that in the presence of turbulence and noise, these engineered reference beams can improve estimation accuracy including field-estimated Strehl Ratio (SR) and Signal-to-Noise ratio (SNR) for certain point and extended object types compared to a flat-top reference beam with a spherical phase, yielding images with higher fidelity.