General theories of reflection and transmission scratch holograms

Abstract

Scratch holograms can be created easily and the associated interesting phenomena may be observed in daily life. In this paper, general and quantitative theories of scratch holograms were derived and presented. Both the reflection case where a scratch hologram reflects light, and the transmission case where it refracts and transmits light, were considered. A predictive model, which has not been presented in the literature, was developed. The model was able to solve for the position of the bright points along the scratches using a computational method. Extensive experimentation was carried out with scratch holograms of two designs to verify the model. Photographic evidence demonstrated extremely good fits with the theoretical predictions. The model was then used to theoretically simulate the 3D spatial positions of the hologram and also quantify distortion present in the images to illustrate novel real-life applications of the theories presented.