Abstract
Every holographic video display is built on a spatial light modulator, which directs light by diffraction to form points in three-dimensional space. The modulators currently used for holographic video displays are challenging to use for several reasons: they have relatively low bandwidth, high cost, low diffraction angle, poor scalability, and the presence of quantization noise, unwanted diffractive orders and zero-order light. Here we present modulators for holographic video displays based on anisotropic leaky-mode couplers, which have the potential to address all of these challenges. These modulators can be fabricated simply, monolithically and at low cost. Additionally, these modulators are capable of new functionalities, such as wavelength division multiplexing for colour display. We demonstrate three enabling properties of particular interest—polarization rotation, enlarged angular diffraction, and frequency domain colour filtering—and suggest that this technology can be used as a platform for low-cost, high-performance holographic video displays.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Kreis, T., Aswendt, P. & Hofling, R. Hologram reconstruction using a digital micromirror device. Opt. Eng. 40, 926–933 (2001)
Pearson, E. MEMS Spatial Light Modulator for Holographic Displays. Masters thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (2001)
Hilaire, P., Benton, S. & Lucente, M. Synthetic aperture holography: a novel approach to three-dimensional displays. J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 9, 1969–1977 (1992)
Häussler, R., Schwerdtner, A. & Leister, N. Large holographic displays as an alternative to stereoscopic displays. Proc. SPIE Stereosc. Displays Applicat. XIX, 68030M (2008)
Chen, G.-L., Lin, C.-Y., Kuo, M.-K. & Chang, C.-C. Numerical suppression of zero-order image in digital holography. Opt. Express 15, 8851–8856 (2007)
Sato, K., Sugita, A., Morimoto, M. & Fujii, K. Reconstruction of color images at high quality by a holographic display. Proc. SPIE Practical Hologr. XX, 6136 (2006)
Jackel, J., Rice, C. & Veselka, J. Proton exchange for high-index waveguides in LiNbO3 . Appl. Phys. Lett. 41, 607–608 (1982)
Matteo, A., Tsai, C. & Do, N. Collinear guided wave to leaky wave acoustooptic interactions in proton-exchanged LiNbO3 waveguides. IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelectr. Freq. Control 47, 16–28 (2000)
Rust, U. & Strake, E. Acoustooptical coupling of guided to substrate modes in planar proton-exchanged LiNbO3-waveguides. Proc. Integrated Photonics Research ME4 (Vol. 10 OSA Technical Digest Series, Optical Society of America, 1992)
Onural, L., Bozdagi, G. & Atalar, A. A new holographic 3-dimensional television display. Proc. 1991 IEEE Ultrason. Symp. 1, 543–546 (1991)
Proklov, V. & Korablev, E. Multichannel waveguide devices using collinear acoustooptic interaction. Proc. 1992 IEEE Ultrason. Symp. 1, 173–178 (1992)
Ito, K. & Kawamoto, K. An optical deflector using collinear acoustooptic coupling fabricated on proton-exchanged LiNbO3 . Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 37, 4858–4865 (1998)
Lee, H. The scophony television receiver. Nature 142, 59–62 (1938)
Do, N. T., Su, J., Yoo, J., Matteo, A. M. & Tsai, C. S. High-efficiency acoustooptic guided-mode to leaky-mode conversion in proton-exchanged lithium niobate waveguides. Proc. 1999 Ultrason. Symp. 613–616. (1999)
Ohmachi, Y. & Noda, J. LiNbO3 TE-TM mode converter using collinear acoustooptic interaction. IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 13, 43–46 (1977)
Sohler, W. Integrated optics in LiNbO3 . Thin Solid Films 175, 191–200 (1989)
Smalley, D. et al. Holovideo for everyone: a low-cost holovideo monitor. J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 415, 012055 (2013)
Bove, V., Plesniak, W., Quentmeyer, T. & Barabas, J. Real-time holographic video images with commodity PC hardware. Proc. SPIE Stereosc. Displays Applicat. XII, 255262 (2005)
Barabas, J., Smithwick, Q., Smalley, D. & Bove, V. M. Real-time shader rendering of holographic stereograms. Proc. SPIE Practical Hologr. XXIII, 723303 (2009)
Smithwick, Q., Barabas, J., Smalley, D. & Bove, V. M. Interactive holographic stereograms with accommodation cues. Proc. SPIE Practical Hologr. XXIV, 761903 (2010)
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by consortium funding at the MIT Media Lab and by Intel Corp. Graphics hardware was provided by NVIDIA. D.E.S. thanks the MIT Nanostructures Laboratory for use of its facilities, E. Pearson for discussion, and D. Novy for assistance with GPU coding.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
D.E.S. performed experimental work and fabricated devices. D.E.S., Q.Y.J.S. and V.M.B. participated in conceptualization of waveguide phenomena for holographic video. D.E.S., Q.Y.J.S., V.M.B., J.B. and S.J. participated in the design and evaluation of experiments.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Figures
This file contains Supplementary Figures 1-2, which illustrate the fabrication of waveguide modulators. (PDF 212 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Smalley, D., Smithwick, Q., Bove, V. et al. Anisotropic leaky-mode modulator for holographic video displays. Nature 498, 313–317 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12217
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12217
This article is cited by
-
Vectorial liquid-crystal holography
eLight (2024)
-
Frequency–angular resolving LiDAR using chip-scale acousto-optic beam steering
Nature (2023)
-
Holobricks: modular coarse integral holographic displays
Light: Science & Applications (2022)
-
Slim-panel holographic video display
Nature Communications (2020)
-
Complex-amplitude metasurface-based orbital angular momentum holography in momentum space
Nature Nanotechnology (2020)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.