Recordable-Time Extension of Digital Light-in-Flight Recording by Holography Using a Polarization-Imaging Camera

Digital light-in-flight recording by holography is a powerful tool for observing ultrashort light pulse propagation as a motion picture. However, the recordable time of the technique has been limited by the lateral length of the image sensor used for the recording of the hologram, and no technique for extending the recordable time has been reported yet. Then, to extend the recordable time of digital light-in-flight recording by holography, we proposed a technique that records two holograms as a single hologram using double reference light pulses with an image sensor. In this technique, the image sensor is spatially divided into multiple micro-areas. Each micro-area consists of 2 × 1 pixels and records 1 pixel of each of the two holograms. We employed a polarization-imaging camera in order to implement the proposed technique to extend the recordable time. This technique is a new application of the polarization-imaging camera. We experimentally succeeded in extending the recordable time for the first time using the proposed technique. Specifically, we recorded the motion picture of the ultrashort light pulse propagation for 1.04 ps.