Impact of the spatial coherence on self-interference digital holography* *Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 91750202, 91750114, and 11922406), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant Nos. 2018YFA0306200 and 2017YFA0303700), and the Science and Technology Project of Jiangxi Provincial Education Department, China (Grant No. GJJ190915).

Abstract

Owing to the unique feature that the signal and reference waves of self-interference digital holography (SIDH) contain the same spatial information from the same point of object, compared with conventional digital holography, the SIDH has the special spatial coherence properties. We present a statistical optics approach to analyzing the formation of cross-correlation image in SIDH. Our study reveals that the spatial coherence of illumination light can greatly influence the imaging characteristics of SIDH, and the impact extent of the spatial coherence depends substantially on the recording distance of hologram. The theoretical conclusions are supported well by numerical simulation and optical experiments.