Information capacity of optical systems for generating dynamic optical landscapes

The generation of optical landscapes may be regarded as a communication system: A user sends information to a designated region in space where the information is represented using optical parameters like intensity. Information capacity has been used for understanding superresolution in optical systems and we adapt this concept to gain useful insights for characterizing techniques for generating optical landscapes. In particular, we investigate the information capacity of the generalized phase contrast method and computer-generated holography. We also consider the invariance of information capacity and discuss its implications for the generation of dynamic optical landscapes.