ABSTRACT
The term “holography” comes from the Greek words “holos,” meaning “whole” or “entire,” and “grafe,” meaning “writing”. At first, the term “holography” was introduced by Dennis Gabor in 1948 in “A new microscopic principle” [1]. The name was chosen to indicate that the method records the entire field information (i.e., amplitude and phase) and not just the usual intensity. Initially, Gabor proposed this technique to “read” optically electron micrographs that suffered from severe spherical aberrations. Gabor was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics “for his invention and development of the holographic method” in 1971. The proof of principle demonstration was performed entirely in the optical domain, and holography has since remained largely connected with optical fields. According to D. Gabor, holography is a two-step process:
Writing the hologram, which involves recording on film the amplitude and phase information.
Reading the hologram, by which the hologram is illuminated with a reference field similar to that in step 1 [1–3].
