Direct fringe writing architecture for photorefractive polymer-based holographic displays: analysis and implementation

Abstract. An optical architecture for updatable photorefractive polymer-based holographic displays via the direct fringe writing of computer-generated holograms is presented. In contrast to interference-based stereogram techniques for hologram exposure in photorefractive polymer (PRP) materials, the direct fringe writing architecture simplifies system design, reduces system footprint and cost, and offers greater affordances over the types of holographic images that can be recorded. This paper reviews motivations and goals for employing a direct fringe writing architecture for photorefractive holographic imagers, describes our implementation of direct fringe transfer, presents a phase-space analysis of the coherent imaging of fringe patterns from spatial light modulator to PRP, and presents resulting experimental holographic images on the PRP resulting from direct fringe transfer.