Holographic reconstruction is troubled by the phase-conjugate wave front arising from Hermitian symmetry of the complex field. The so-called twin image obfuscates the reconstruction in solving the inverse problem. Here we quantitatively reveal how and how much the twin image affects the reconstruction and propose a compressive sensing (CS) approach to reconstruct a hologram completely free from the twin image. Using the canonical basis, the incoherence condition of CS is naturally satisfied by the Fourier transformation associated with wave propagation. With the propagation kernel function related to the distance, the object wave diffracts into a sharp pattern while the phase-conjugate wave diffracts into a diffuse pattern. An iterative algorithm using a total variation sparsity constraint could filter out the diffuse conjugated signal and overcome the inherent physical symmetry of holographic reconstruction. The feasibility is verified by simulation and experimental results, as well as a comparative study to an existing phase retrieval method.

• Received 17 April 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.093902