A Theory of Granularity and Bleaching for Holographic Information Recording

The Kelly three-stage model of photographic information recording is a mathematical model of black-and-white silver-halide film with granularity neglected. In the work reported here, the theory is extended for use in phase-holographic applications. Granularity effects are contained in the fourth and final stage, a two-dimensional, nonhomogeneous, filtered Poisson process. The output of this stage is a sample function of the random process that describes the pattern of modification of the emulsion. Formulas for the signal-to-noise ratio of a hologram and the optimum granular behavior are derived as examples of the use of the granularity model.