Holographic 3-D Displays - Electro-holography within the Grasp of Commercialization

Holography is a diffraction-based coherent imaging technique in which a complex threedimensional object can be reproduced from a flat, two-dimensional screen with a complex transparency representing amplitude and phase values. It is commonly agreed that real-time holography is the ne plus ultra art and science of visualizing fast temporally changing 3-D scenes. The integration of the real-time or electro-holographic principle into display technology is one of the most promising but also challenging developments for the future consumer display and TV market. Only holography allows the reconstruction of naturallooking 3-D scenes, and therefore provides observers with a completely comfortable viewing experience. But to date several challenges have prevented the technology from becoming commercialized. But those obstacles are now starting to be overcome. Recently, we have developed a novel approach to real-time display holography by combining an overlapping sub-hologram technique with a tracked viewing-window technology (Schwerdtner, Leister & Haussler, 2007; Schwerdtner, Haussler & Leister, 2007). For the first time, this enables solutions for large screen interactive holographic displays (Stolle & Haussler, 2008; Reichelt et al., 2008). This chapter presents these novel solutions for large real-time holographic 3-D displays in the context of previous and current approaches to electro-holography. The holographic display developed by us combines a tailored holographic recording scheme with active tracking of the observer. This unique approach dramatically reduces the demand for the space-bandwidth product of the hologram and thus allows the use of state-of-the-art spatial light modulators and enables real-time calculation. The fundamentals and challenges of the holographic display technology are described, its implementation in prototypes is demonstrated, and the bright prospects for the 3-D display market are discussed.