Eliminating atmospheric optical noise through digital holography

Systems that attempt to image or project optical energy or information through a turbulent atmosphere are limited by aberrating, refractive index variations. The processes can be improved in a variety of ways if the complex wave function of the aberrated wave can be recorded, reconstructed and analyzed at a sufficient speed. This paper describes application of digital holography for recording, reconstructing, and processing complex wave functions to complement methods such as adaptive optics and lucky imaging. Having the complex waveform provides all of the information required by adaptive optical procedures and also enables improved image processing that is not applicable to real images. Unlike intensity averaging, when complex wave functions are averaged, the random fluctuations in the phase cancel since phase terms include both positive and negative values. In this paper we describe the application of digital holography for recording, reconstructing, and processing complex wave functions of atmospherically aberrated wave functions and report demonstrations in correcting for atmospheric turbulence.