Digital holography with embedded microlasers: a preliminary study

In this study, we investigate the use of microlasers as light sources for digital holographic microscopy embedded in the sample. Microlasers are 50-μm sized dye-doped self-assembled cholesteric liquid-crystal microdroplets that isotropically emit single-mode laser light. By employing an epi-illumination configuration of a standard optical microscope, we excited a single microlaser beneath the sample plane and subsequently acquired in-line holograms of various samples placed between the microlaser and microscope objective. Embedding the light source enabled us to uniquely acquire in-line digital holograms in transmission even though the sample is observed in an epi-illumination configuration and could in principle be infinitely thick on one side.