Evaluation of the Wavefront Aberration in Holography

A method is described, using exact ray-tracing, for calculating the wavefront aberration which arises from a change in geometry or wavelength between the recording and reconstructing processes, of a holographic image point, in the case of a plane hologram. The wavefront aberration value is needed to assess the image quality of a holographic system possessing magnification. In the present treatment a single hologram has been considered, but if necessary simple transfer formulae could extend this treatment to a multihologram system. Values of the wavefront aberration obtained from the theoretical calculation have been compared with experimental results and good agreement has been found.