Electro-holographic light field generator devices comprising surface acoustic wave (SAW) optical modulators are disclosed that employ multiple output couplers. These output couplers might be distributed along waveguides of the SAW modulators, within output coupling regions. Each of these output couplers can be configured for directing an incident leaky mode light at different output angles. In some cases, it may be desirable to employ the output couplers to function as different sub-pixels, to provide light to different viewing directions. The output couplers may be mirrors, volume gratings, chirped gratings, reflection gratings, two dimensional gratings, and/or transmission gratings. The output couplers may be angled so that the coupling output fans for each optical modulator are offset from the waveguide for that optical modulator.

A three-dimensional light modulator, of which the pixels are combined to form modulation elements. Each modulation element can be coded with a preset discrete value such that three-dimensionally arranged object points can be holographically reconstructed. The light modulator is characterized in that assigned to the pixels of the modulator are beam splitters or beam combiners which, for each modulation element, combine the light wave parts modulated by the pixels by means of refraction or diffraction on the output side to form a common light beam which exits the modulation element in a set propagation direction.

The invention relates to a display device for holographic reconstruction. The display device comprises a spatial light modulator device having combined phase modulating pixels and amplitude modulating pixels, an illumination unit generating sufficiently coherent light and arranged to illuminate of the spatial light modulator device and a reflection plane. The device being arranged such that light enters the spatial light modulator device and passes both the phase modulating pixel and the amplitude modulating pixel of the spatial light modulator device. The light is reflected by the reflection plane in between.

In the present invention, by providing an apparatus for displaying a complex modulated holograph and including a light source configured to output light, a display configured to display the hologram by diffracting the output light through a plurality of pixels, and a processor configured to control the display to obtain complex hologram data corresponding to the hologram, and modulate the output light based on the complex hologram data and device information of the plurality of pixels, it is possible to modulate amplitude information and phase information of the light source into required values and display a complex hologram, and to remove a noise component of the hologram.

Disclosed are a beam combining/splitting modulator, a display apparatus including the same, and a spatial light modulation method. The beam combining/splitting modulator includes a light modulator including first and second modulation regions for modulating light, a polarization converter disposed at a side of an emitting surface of the light modulator and including a first transmissive region for polarizing and converting light incident from the first modulation region to have a first polarization and a second transmissive region for polarizing and converting light incident from the second modulation region to have a second polarization, a birefringence modulator disposed at the side of an emitting surface of the polarization converter and switching between a first state in which birefringence occurs and a second state in which birefringence does not occur, and a polarizer disposed at the side of an emitting surface of the birefringence modulator.

Examples are disclosed that relate to a near-eye display device including a holographic display system. The holographic display system includes a light source configured to emit light that is converging or diverging, a waveguide configured to be positioned in a field of view of a user's eye, and a digital dynamic hologram configured to receive the light, and project the light into the waveguide such that the light propagates through the waveguide.

The invention refers to an Illumination device for illuminating a spatial light modulator device. Sub-holograms are used for encoding a hologram into the spatial light modulator device. The Illumination device comprises at least one light source for emitting light for illuminating the spatial light modulator device and a beam shaping unit. The beam shaping unit provides a flat-top plateau-type distribution of an absolute value of a complex degree of mutual coherence of the light in a plane of the spatial light modulator device to be illuminated. The flat-top plateau-type distribution of the absolute value of the complex degree of mutual coherence has a shape that is at least similar to a shape of the largest sub-hologram used for encoding of object points into the spatial light modulator device.

A three-dimensional light modulator, of which the pixels are combined to form modulation elements. Each modulation element can be coded with a preset discrete value such that three-dimensionally arranged object points can be holographically reconstructed. The light modulator is characterized in that assigned to the pixels of the modulator are beam splitters or beam combiners which, for each modulation element, combine the light wave parts modulated by the pixels by means of refraction or diffraction on the output side to form a common light beam which exits the modulation element in a set propagation direction.

The present disclosure provides an optical modulation device, an optical modulation method and a holographic display apparatus. The optical modulation device is configured to perform optical modulation of a light beam and comprising: an amplitude modulator, configured to perform amplitude modulation of the light beam based on amplitude information in complex amplitude information of each pixel of a digital hologram; an optical scanning assembly, configured to scan the light beam within a predetermined range; a phase modulator, configured to perform phase modulation of the light beam based on phase information in the complex amplitude information.

For comfortable viewing of a 3-D scene at various viewing angles, a display having a large tracking range for a variable viewer distance is required. A controllable light-influencing element deflects light in coarse steps in a viewer range. Within said steps, the light is deflected by a further controllable light-influencing element continuously or with fine gradation. The light modulation device is suitable in holographic or autostereoscopic displays for guiding the visibility ranges of the image information to be displayed so as to follow the eyes of the viewers.