High Sensitivity Transient Holographic Full-Polarization Microscopy

Abstract

The polarization state of light provides direct access to ultrafast electronic, magnetic, and structural dynamics in materials. Transient wide-field microscopy with simultaneous amplitude, phase, and polarization sensitivity enables spatially resolved measurements of these dynamics, but its sensitivity is often limited by technical noise and background fluctuations. Here, we demonstrate transient holographic full-polarization microscopy with substantially reduced instrumental noise and sensitivity approaching the shot-noise limit. We compare holographic geometries using one, two, and four reference beams and find that the single-reference configuration provides the most favourable shot-noise-limited sensitivity for the derived polarization observables. Combined with two-camera detection, it simultaneously captures both orthogonal polarization components without distributing reference photons among multiple carriers. A self-referenced noise-reduction framework combining singular value decomposition and background subtraction further suppresses correlated noise. For spatially averaged regions, the baseline noise is reduced by factors of three-sixty, enabling detection of weaker transient responses at lower excitation densities and in weakly absorbing materials.