Synthetic optical holography is a newly proposed method for implementing phase imaging in scanning near-field optical microscopy. It combines high-speed phase imaging, technical simplicity, and simultaneous operation at visible to terahertz frequencies to improve upon competing image acquisition processes by a factor of 50. This has led scanning near-field optical microscopy to become a powerful tool for nano-optical examination of surfaces. We aim to explore the effects of partial coherence in the illuminating and reference fields
