An analytical and experimental study of nonlinearities in hologram recording.

A theoretical analysis of the effect of recording nonlinearities upon the image reconstructed from a hologram made of a diffuse object is presented. Extensive experimental evidence which supports this theory is also given. In particular, it is shown that the magnitude of the nonlinearity noise can be calculated knowing the shape of the amplitude transmittance-exposure (T(a) - E) curve, the bias transmittance (T(b)), and the ratio of the reference beam to the object beam intensity (K). It is further shown that for diffuse objects the shape of the nonlinearity noise distribution can be calculated from the shape of the object.