Perfectly matched radial-shearing holography with phase-shifting Theon-ladder zone plate

Abstract A method suitable for recording radial-shearing holograms is proposed. By inserting a phase-shifting Theon-ladder zone plate at the Fourier plane of Kepler telescope, perfectly matched interferogram can be obtained with high contrast and good quality. Good image quality should meet not only theoretical resolution, but also good interference contrast. Interference pattern generated by the multicopies of the object will achieve the best contrast, which could significantly improve the quality of reconstructed image. The interferograms of multicopies were achieved with the help of the Kepler system, and the reconstruction with the same theoretical resolution was provided. An equivalent experiment on USAF1951 resolution test target verifies the effectiveness of our proposed method. As a kind of common-path setup, the proposed radial-shearing method not only takes full advantage of the detector screen but also provides the high signal-to-noise ratio hologram.