Digital in-line holography to quantify secondary droplets from the impact of a single drop on a thin film

Digital in-line holography (DIH) is an optical technique which measures particle sizes and their three-dimensional (3D) positions and velocities. Here DIH and a recently proposed hybrid method of particle detection are applied to quantify the secondary droplets generated by the impact of a single drop on a thin film. By leveraging the expected symmetry between in-plane and out-of-plane velocities, experimental depth uncertainty is measured to be approximately 0.7 of the mean droplet diameter. Furthermore, comparison with previous measurements using alternative techniques shows good agreement with the measured temporal evolution of drop number, size, and velocity components. Finally, the power of DIH to extract the complex 3D morphology of the protruding jets is demonstrated.