Application of liquid crystal (LC) devices for optoelectronic reconstruction of digitally stored holograms

Recent advances in high-resolution CCD detectors allow the development of t he concept of digital holography that relies on the capture of 2D microinte rferograms and their further numerical reconstruction. This approach is val id for optical metrology applications as it gives direct access to the phas e and intensity of an object at the selected distance "d", However, it is n ot convienient for direct 3D-display purposes, This is the reason why the a uthors propose the optoelectronic reconstruction of a hologram that is digi tally recorded and transferred to another optoelectronic medium. The applic ation of LCD matrices and optically addressed liquid crystal cells as recon struction media is discussed. Their applicability for computer-generated an d optical holograms is tested by means of simple experiments. The problems connected with limited resolution of the recording (CCD) and reconstruction (LCD, DMD) devices are considered, The comparison of the results obtained by numerical and optoelectronic means is presented, together with a discuss ion of the limitations and further possibilities of these techniques. (C) 2 000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.