holography

/heuh log"reuh fee/, n.

the process or technique of making holograms.

[1795-1805; HOLO- + -GRAPHY]

* * *

Method of recording or reproducing a three-dimensional image, or hologram, by means of a pattern of interference produced using a laser beam.

To create a hologram, a beam of coherent light (a laser) is split; half the beam falls on a recording medium (such as a photographic plate) unaltered, and the other half is first reflected off the object to be imaged. The two beams together produce an interference pattern of stripes and whorls on the plate. The developed plate is the hologram. When light is shone on the hologram, a three-dimensional image of the original object is produced by the recorded interference pattern. Some holograms require laser light to reproduce the image; others may be viewed in ordinary white light. Holography was invented in 1947 by the Hungarian-British physicist Dennis Gabor (1900–1979), who won a 1971 Nobel Prize for his invention.

* * *

▪ optics

Introduction

      means of creating a unique photographic image without the use of a lens. The photographic recording of the image is called a hologram, which appears to be an unrecognizable pattern of stripes and whorls but which—when illuminated by coherent light, as by a laser beam (laser)—organizes the light into a three-dimensional representation of the original object.

      An ordinary photographic image records the variations in intensity of light reflected from an object, producing dark areas where less light is reflected and light areas where more light is reflected. Holography, however, records not only the intensity of the light but also its phase, or the degree to which the wave fronts making up the reflected light are in step with each other, or coherent (coherence). Ordinary light is incoherent—that is, the phase relationships between the multitude of waves in a beam are completely random; wave fronts of ordinary light waves are not in step.

   Dennis Gabor (Gabor, Dennis), a Hungarian-born scientist, invented holography in 1948, for which he received the Nobel Prize for Physics more than 20 years later (1971). Gabor considered the possibility of improving the resolving power of the electron microscope, first by utilizing the electron beam to make a hologram of the object and then by examining this hologram with a beam of coherent light, as shown in Figure 1—>. In Gabor's original system the hologram was a record of the interference between the light diffracted by the object and a collinear background. This automatically restricts the process to that class of objects that have considerable areas that are transparent (see Figure 1A—>). When the hologram is used to form an image, twin images are formed, as illustrated in Figure 1B—>. The light associated with these images is propagating in the same direction, and hence in the plane of one image light from the other image appears as an out-of-focus component. Although a degree of coherence can be obtained by focusing light through a very small pinhole, this technique reduces the light intensity too much for it to serve in holography; therefore, Gabor's proposal was for several years of only theoretical interest. The development of lasers in the early 1960s suddenly changed the situation (see laser). A laser beam has not only a high degree of coherence but high intensity as well.

      Of the many kinds of laser beam, two have especial interest in holography: the continuous-wave (CW) laser and the pulsed laser. The CW laser emits a bright, continuous beam of a single, nearly pure colour. The pulsed laser emits an extremely intense, short flash of light that lasts only about 1/100,000,000 of a second. Two scientists in the United States, Emmett N. Leith and Juris Upatnieks of the University of Michigan, applied the CW laser to holography and achieved great success, opening the way to many research applications.

Basic principles of holography

 In essence, the problem Gabor conceived in his attempt to improve the electron microscope was the same as the one photographers have confronted in their search for three-dimensional realism in photography. To achieve it, the light streaming from the source must itself be photographed. If the waves of this light, with their multitude of rapidly moving crests and troughs, can be frozen for an instant and photographed, the wave pattern can then be reconstructed and will exhibit the same three-dimensional character as the object from which the light is reflected. Holography accomplishes such a reconstruction by recording the phase content as well as the amplitude content of the reflected light waves of a laser beam. How this works is shown in Figure 2—> on the left.

Continuous-wave laser holography

      In a darkened room, a beam of coherent laser light is directed onto object O from source B. The beam is reflected, scattered, and diffracted by the physical features of the object and arrives on a photographic plate at P. Simultaneously, part of the laser beam is split off as an incident, or reference, beam A and is reflected by mirror M also onto plate P. The two beams interfere with each other; that is, their respective amplitudes of waves combine, creating on the photographic plate a complex pattern of stripes and whorls called interference fringes (interference fringe). These fringes consist of alternate light and dark areas. The light areas result when the two beams striking the plate are in step—when crest meets crest and trough meets trough in the waves from the two beams; the beams are then in phase, and so reinforce each other. When the two waves are of equal amplitude but opposite phase—trough meeting crest and crest meeting trough—they cancel each other and a dark area results.

      The plate, when developed, is called a hologram. The image on the plate bears no resemblance to the object photographed but contains a record of all the phase and amplitude information present in the beam reflected from the object. The two parts of the laser beam—the direct and the reflected beams—meet on the plate at a wide angle and are recorded as very fine and close-packed interference fringes on the hologram. This pattern of fringes contains all the optical information of the object being photographed.

 By reversing the procedure, as shown on the right in Figure 2—>, an image of the original object can be reconstructed. The coherent light of a laser beam illuminates the hologram negative H. Most of the light from the laser passes through the film as a central beam A and is not used. The close-packed, fine-detailed fringes on the hologram negative act as a diffraction grating, bending or diffracting the remaining light to exactly reverse the original condition of the coherent light waves that created the hologram. The diffracted light is transmitted at a wide angle from that of the laser's reference beam.

      On the light source side of the hologram, at C, a virtual image visible to the eye is formed. On the other side, at B, a real image that can be photographed is formed. Both these reconstituted images have a three-dimensional character because in addition to amplitude information, which is all that an ordinary photographic process stores, phase information also has been stored. This phase information is what provides the three-dimensional characteristics of the image, as it contains within it exact information on the depths and heights of the various contours of the object. It is possible to photograph the reconstituted image, at B, by ordinary photographic means, at a selected depth, in exact focus.

      The real image from a hologram—that is, the one that can be photographed—appears pseudoscopic, or with a reversed curvature. This reversal can be eliminated by making a double hologram, first by preparing the single hologram and then by using it as an object in the creation of a second hologram. With a double reversal the image becomes normal again, as when a mirror image of writing is made legible by viewing it in a second mirror. The real image of a hologram has valuable properties. A viewing camera or microscope can be positioned and focused on various selected positions in depth. The original object also can be brought into the position in space.

      The hologram not only offers images at different depths (different cross-sections of the object) but also images seen along different directions if the viewer moves off the axis on which the principal image is viewed. Direct images can be seen under these conditions. In holography it is also possible to record on the same plate a succession of numerous multiple images that can be reconstructed as one image, leading to the possibility of holography in colour. Three holograms could be superimposed on the same plate, using three lasers of different colours. Reconstruction with the three different lasers would produce an image in its natural colour, even though the hologram plate itself is black-and-white.

Pulsed-laser holography

      A moving object can be made to appear to be at rest when a hologram is produced with the extremely rapid and high-intensity flash of a pulsed ruby laser. The duration of such a pulse can be less than 1/10,000,000 of a second; and, as long as the object does not move more than 1/10 of a wavelength of light during this short time interval, a usable hologram can be obtained. A continuous-wave laser produces a much less intense beam, requiring long exposures; thus it is not suitable when even the slightest motion is present.

      With the rapidly flashing light source provided by the pulsed laser, exceedingly fast-moving objects can be examined. Chemical reactions (chemical reaction) often change optical properties of solutions; by means of holography, such reactions can be studied. Holograms created with pulsed lasers have the same three-dimensional characteristics as those made with CW sources.

      Pulsed-laser holography has been used in wind-tunnel (wind tunnel) experiments. Usually high-speed air flow around aerodynamic objects is studied with an optical interferometer (a device for detecting small changes in interference fringes, in this instance caused by variations in air density). Such an instrument is difficult to adjust and hard to keep stable. Furthermore, all of its optical components (mirrors, plates, and the like) in the optical path must be of high quality and sturdy enough to minimize distortion under high gas-flow velocities. The holographic system, however, avoids the stringent requirements of optical interferometry. It records interferometrically refractive-index (refractive index) changes in the air flow created by pressure changes as the gas deflects around the aerodynamic object.

Nonphotographic holography

      Holograph images are also recorded on materials other than photographic plates. Most of these nonphotographic materials, however, are still in the experimental stage, and the photographic production of holograms remains the only widely used process.

Major applications of holography

      Because the real image from the hologram can be viewed by a camera or microscope, it is possible to examine difficult and even inaccessible regions of the original object. This feature renders holography useful for many purposes. A deep, narrow depression on a plane, for example, cannot often be reached by a microscope objective because of working distance limitations. If the detail can be reached by coherent light, however, a hologram can be taken and its image reconstructed. Since this image is aerial, the microscope can be positioned in such a way that it can focus on the required region. In the same way, a camera also can be focused at the required depth and can photograph objects inside a deep transparent chamber.

      Many holographic applications exploit the fact that composite repeat holograms of a surface tilted slightly after each exposure can be treated as composite, repeat wave patterns. If two such patterns are matched, a condition arises that is effectively the same as that which exists in ordinary classical two-beam interferometry, in which a single light source is split into two beams and the beams recombined to form interference patterns. Such an arrangement can be set up in several ways; in one, a holographic exposure is made of a surface, then, before the hologram is removed or developed, the surface is slightly tilted and a repeat hologram is made, superimposed on the first hologram. When this double hologram is reconstructed, the object as well as the surface covered by the interference fringes caused by surface irregularities can be seen. These fringes reveal microtopographic information about the object.

      Holographic interferometry can be applied successfully to any situation in which the wave front is modified slightly, no matter how complex the surface may be. Elastic deformation (elasticity) effects can be studied by superimposing the two wave fronts on the hologram, reflected before and after the elastic distortion effect has been introduced. When reconstructed, the hologram provides a clear picture of the object, crossed by interference fringes. Even highly complex shapes respond to this approach in a manner that would be impossible in classical interferometry. There is also great flexibility in the choice of methods used to apply distortions, and even these conditions alone often completely exclude optical interferometry. Not only static distortion but also slow dynamic variations can be studied in this manner. And with pulsed ruby lasers, very fast, short-time variations can be studied.

      Time variations in the shape of an object are not usually studied with a single, double-exposure hologram but by an alternative method. First, a hologram is made of the object in its free, unstressed condition. Then the object is stressed and a new hologram made. The stressed hologram is viewed through the original unstressed hologram, and the superposition provides the interference fringe pattern that would have been produced by a double exposure. By such means, time variations can be studied. Valuable studies have been made of mechanically vibrating systems, such as diaphragms, musical instruments (e.g., the belly of a violin), vibrating steam-turbine blades, and the like. The examination of large engineering components, measuring as much as one metre (about three feet) in length, imposes special problems. The distance between the hologram plate and the object must be great enough to ensure that all of the object can be seen at once. In turn, laser power must be increased, high demands on the coherence of light are imposed, and mechanical stability of the whole setup must be exceptionally good.

      When hologram interferometry is applied to the examination of vibrations set up in a rapidly rotating turbine blade, stroboscopic techniques aid the analysis. The laser light is stroboscopically interrupted at the same frequency as the rotation of the turbine blade, and, with the blade thus apparently at rest, a hologram is produced. Consequently, a holographic interferometric pattern is created for the blade whose motion is stopped by stroboscopic action. By slightly altering the frequency of the stroboscope arrangement, a slow scan can be made over the complete vibrational stress pattern to which the blade is subjected. Much information about stresses in turbine blades and other rotating or vibrating objects can be obtained from such holograms.

      Although holography can solve many problems, it still is a relatively expensive procedure. It has been used—or misused—in applications more amenable to simpler and cheaper methods. The laser system by itself is a fairly complex and costly piece of equipment, and costs are aggravated further by the additional equipment and the long exposure times required to produce holograms and reconstruct images. Aside from its uses in microscopy and interferometry, holography is therefore applied only when other methods have failed or are not precise enough.

* * *