Holography in the invisible. From the thermal infrared to the terahertz waves: outstanding applications and fundamental limits

Since its invention, holography has been mostly applied at visible wavelengths in a variety of applications. Specifically, non-destructive testing of manufactured objects was a driver for developing holographic methods and all related ones based on the speckle pattern recording. One substantial limitation of holographic non-destructive testing is the setup stability requirements directly related to the laser wavelength. This observation has driven some works for 15 years: developing holography at wavelengths much longer than visible ones. In this paper, we will first review researches carried out in the infrared, mostly digital holography at thermal infrared wavelengths around 10 micrometers. We will discuss the advantages of using such wavelengths and show different examples of applications. In nondestructive testing, large wavelengths allow using digital holography in perturbed environments on large objects and measure large deformations, typical of the aerospace domain. Other astonishing applications such as reconstructing scenes through smoke and flames were proposed. When moving further in the spectrum, digital holography with so-called Terahertz waves (up to 3 millimeters wavelength) has also been studied. The main advantage here is that these waves easily penetrate some materials. Therefore, one can envisage Terahertz digital holography to reconstruct the amplitude and phase of visually opaque objects. We review some cases in which Terahertz digital holography has shown potential in biomedical and industrial applications. We will also address some fundamental bottlenecks that prevent fully benefiting from the advantages of digital holography when increasing the wavelength.