Recording and reconstruction of digital Gabor hologram

This paper looks at some as yet undisclosed observations in the recording and reconstruction of digital Gabor hologram. Small particles on the specimen plane diffract the illuminating spherical wave to form the object wave which interferes with the un-diffracted reference to form the in-line hologram. The interference is similar to that between two spherical wavefronts. It is shown that resolution enhancement can be achieved in the recording process through the use of wavefronts with different curvature. Numerical reconstruction of this hologram with a conjugate of the illuminating (reference) wave provides the in-focus real image at the object plane. It is exemplified that the proper choice of the reconstruction wavefront can optically magnify the reconstructed image enabling one to better visualize the resolution enhancement. Both theoretical analysis and experimental confirmation are provided for these observations.