Performance limits of electron holography

Transmission electron microscopy is wave optics. The object exit wave contains the full object information. However, in the usual intensity images, recorded either in real space or in Fourier space, the phases are missing. In many applications at medium and at high resolution, electron holography has shown its unique ability of solving the “missing phase problem” and utilizing the recovered phase for complete interpretation of the object structure. The question is “What are the performance limits?” with respect to field of view, lateral resolution and signal resolution. In this article, the performance limits are derived and discussed.