Digital recording and numerical reconstruction of holograms: an optical diagnostic for combustion.

Holographic interferometry (HI) has proved to be a useful tool for nonintrusive temperature measurements in flames (and thereafter for inference of the local composition based on the state relationship approach) with high spatial and temporal resolution. Digital holographic interferometry (DHI) is a relatively new imaging and measurement technique that electronically records a hologram (e.g., on a CCD) and reconstructs it by a numerical method. Cumbersome chemical processing of the hologram is avoided in DHI, which thereby provides greater flexibility, speed, and the potential for real-time processing. In conventional holography, fringes that are neither bright nor dark on a hologram cannot be accurately resolved. The DHI technique has not yet to our knowledge been used for combustion applications. Herein we evaluate its efficacy for making temperature measurements in flames and assess its applicability through a simulation. Each part of a double exposure associated with the holographic technique is considered to be recorded by a hypothetical CCD sensor at a separate time from the other part. We applied the principles of Fourier optics to develop two numerical methods for hologram reconstruction, and we show that both methods provide an accurate reconstruction of the phase image associated with a flame. Because of the periodic nature of the wave function, the reconstructed phase values are limited to the interval [-pi/2, pi/2]. Thus an unwrapping algorithm is provided that produces a continuous phase distribution based on the condition that the reconstructed phase is jumped by a value of -pi or pi. We have also developed an iterative calculation method to adjust the value of the digital reference wave parameters that determines the phase imaging reconstruction in DHI.