Abstract
Principles of digital holography and its recent advances are described. It is based on digital recording of hologram and digital reconstruction by a computer. Hence 3-d distributions of both amplitude and phase of optical fields are obtained automatically and quantitatively. Issues due to much lower resolution of CCD's than photographic materials can be overcome by an in-line setup with phase-shift of the reference beam for delivering complex amplitude of the object wave. Basic principles and applications of this method are presented for microscopy, color holography, polarization analysis, and measurement of surface shape, deformation, and vibration.
