Characteristics and measurements of an aperture-limited in-line hologram image

The intensity distribution in the neighborhood of the real image reconstructed from an in-line Fraunhofer hologram was investigated. Assuming a finite amount of information recorded on the hologram in terms of a limiting aperture, the image is shown to possess intensity variations that are dependent on the argument of a first-order Bessel function recorded on the hologram. The theoretical results are presented on isophote diagrams and are verified experimentally. Three measurements of the image width are presented, and the inherent errors are found. The focal tolerance of the aperture-limited image relative to the recording parameters is discussed.