Power loss due to beam splitter cascade in the simultaneous sampling of a volume speckle field for phase retrieval

A setup for the simultaneous recording of axially-displaced intensity patterns of a volume speckle field to be used for phase retrieval is proposed. Beam splitters (BS) are cascaded directing the beams to different detectors, in turn, generating different sampling planes. The effective power, which is reflected in the speckle intensity measurements, is however compromised.

The BS's transmission and reflection coefficients are evaluated according to the setup under the assumption that the only power loss induced is due to these optics. Simulations show a set of BS combination that delivers the same beam intensity of at least 6% to all the planes still results in successful phase retrieval.

Other combinations of beam splitter transmission and reflection values are also explored. The single-shot operation of the proposed technique avoids the time-consuming sequential measurements of the speckle field. Possible future studies include application of the technique to measure a system's characteristic properties that are not temporally fixed like temperature and optical turbulence in the environment.