Influence of reference beam aberrations in digital holography on the image quality

In digital holography the imaging process consists of two quite different techniques: physical registration using CCD camera and digital image reconstruction with specialized software. To receive the best image quality, besides diffraction limitations, the recording reference and reconstruction beams should be identical. The measurement of the reference field distribution at the hologram plane can be accomplished with a limited precision. The influence of differences between the reconstruction and recording reference beams is the subject of the paper. The analytical and experimental results are presented. It worth to emphasize that the differences mentioned influence results obtained in digital holographic interferometry as well.