Publication

Computational architecture for full-color holographic displays based on anisotropic leaky-mode modulators

Sunny Jolly, Daniel Smalley, James Barabas, V. Michael Bove, Jr.

Abstract

The MIT Mark IV holographic display system employs a novel anisotropic leaky-mode spatial light modulator that allows for the simultaneous and superimposed modulation of red, green, and blue light via wavelength-division multiplexing. This WDM-based scheme for full-color display requires that incoming video signals containing holographic fringe information are comprised of non-overlapping spectral bands that fall within the available 200 MHz output bandwidth of commercial GPUs. These bands correspond to independent color channels in the display output and are appropriately band-limited and centered to match the multiplexed passbands and center frequencies in the frequency response of the mode-coupling device. The computational architecture presented in this paper involves the computation of holographic fringe patterns for each color channel and their summation in generating a single video signal for input to the display. In composite, 18 such input signals, each containing holographic fringe information for 26 horizontal-parallax only holographic lines, are generated via three dual-head GPUs for a total of 468 holographic lines in the display output. We present a general scheme for full-color CGH computation for input to Mark IV and furthermore depict the adaptation of the diffraction specific coherent panoramagram approach to fringe computation for the Mark IV architecture.

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