Speckle-free digital holographic recording of a diffusely reflecting object

We demonstrate holographic recording without speckle noise using the digital holographic technique called optical scanning holography (OSH). First, we record a complex hologram of a diffusely reflecting (DR) object using OSH. The incoherent mode of OSH makes it possible to record the complex hologram without speckle noise. Second, we convert the complex hologram to an off-axis real hologram digitally and finally we reconstruct the real hologram using an amplitude-only spatial light modulator (SLM) without twin-image noise and speckle noise. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time demonstrating digital holographic recording of a DR object without speckle noise. (C)2013 Optical Society of America