A beam deflector includes a first wavelength selective polarizer configured to convert a polarization state of light in a first wavelength band into a first polarization state, a first liquid crystal deflector including liquid crystal molecules and an optical path change surface to deflect light incident from the first wavelength selective polarizer, and a controller configured to control the first liquid crystal deflector to adjust an angle of the first optical path change surface.

A near-eye display includes a light source, an optical system, and a phase map. The light source emits illumination light. The optical system is configured to receive the illumination light from the light source and output the illumination light as an in-phase wavefront. The phase map is configured to adjust a phase of the in-phase wavefront to form an image in response to being illuminated by the in-phase wavefront. The phase map is pre-recorded with a phase pattern that generates the image.

A display device includes a light source, a waveguide element, a liquid crystal coupler, a first holographic optical element and a second holographic optical element. The light source is configured to emit light. The waveguide element is located above the light source. The liquid crystal coupler is located between the waveguide element and the light source. The first holographic optical element is located on a top surface of the waveguide element, in which the liquid crystal coupler is configured to change an incident angle that the light emits to the first holographic optical element. The second holographic optical element is located on the top surface of the waveguide element, and there is a first distance in a horizontal direction between the first holographic optical element and the second holographic optical element, in which the second holographic optical element is configured to diffract the light to the waveguide element below.

A light-emitting device including at least a metal layer able to be heated and to propagate surface waves consecutive to the heating of the metal layer, with the metal layer being structured such that it comprises several diffraction patterns able to carry out a diffraction of the surface waves to free-space propagation modes, wherein a synthetic hologram is encoded such that a phase image of a pixel of the hologram is encoded by an offset in the position of one of the diffraction patterns, and a heater of the metal layer.

A coherent backlight unit and a 3D image display device including the coherent backlight unit are provided. The coherent backlight unit includes a light source, a light guide plate, a first diffraction grating, a second diffraction grating, and a reflective optical element. The light source irradiates a coherent light and the reflective optical element reflects the coherent light that is propagating toward one of the side surfaces from the inner side of the light guide plate toward the inner side of the light guide plate.

Metasurfaces provide compact optical elements in head-mounted display systems to, e.g., incouple light into or outcouple light out of a waveguide. The metasurfaces may be formed by a plurality of repeating unit cells, each unit cell comprising two sets or more of nanobeams elongated in crossing directions: one or more first nanobeams elongated in a first direction and a plurality of second nanobeams elongated in a second direction. As seen in a top-down view, the first direction may be along a y-axis, and the second direction may be along an x-axis. The unit cells may have a periodicity in the range of 10 nm to 1 μm, including 10 nm to 500 nm or 300 nm to 500 nm. Advantageously, the metasurfaces provide diffraction of light with high diffraction angles and high diffraction efficiencies over a broad range of incident angles and for incident light with circular polarization.

A method of computing a hologram by determining the wavefronts at the approximate observer eye position that would be generated by a real version of an object to be reconstructed. In normal computer generated holograms, one determines the wavefronts needed to reconstruct an object; this is not done directly in the present invention. Instead, one determines the wavefronts at an observer window that would be generated by a real object located at the same position of the reconstructed object. One can then back-transforms these wavefronts to the hologram to determine how the hologram needs to be encoded to generate these wavefronts. A suitably encoded hologram can then generate a reconstruction of the three-dimensional scene that can be observed by placing one's eyes at the plane of the observer window and looking through the observer window.

Light-emitting devices for motor vehicles are provided, which comprise a reflection hologram. A light-guiding body is provided to direct light from a light source arrangement (4) onto the hologram.

Holographic and diffractive optical encoding techniques for forming reflection or transmission holograms. The encoding device includes a substrate having an interference pattern that can propagate light along a light propagation path from one side of the substrate to another side of the substrate. Furthermore, an optical element may be used to propagate light according to a four-dimensional light field coordinate system.

A light filed (LF) display system for displaying holographic content to viewers in an amusement park (e.g., as part of an amusement park ride). The LF display system in an amusement park includes LF display modules tiled together to form an array of LF modules. In some embodiments, the LF display system includes a tracking system and/or a viewer profiling module. The tracking system and viewer profiling module can monitor and store characteristics of viewers on the amusement park ride, a viewer profile describing a viewer, and/or responses of viewers to the holographic content during the amusement park ride. The holographic content created for display on an amusement park ride can be based on any of the monitored or stored information.