End-to-end design for full-color and large field-of-view computational holographic displays

Holography enables modulation of light waves to create three-dimensional (3D) displays with natural depth cues. Previous research on holographic displays primarily focused on synthesizing real images in free space while neglecting the physical display optics. Here, we propose an end-to-end, system-level design framework that accounts for the complete path from the illumination source to the retina by integrating optimized eyepiece optics. Joint optimization of the hologram, eyepiece optics, and component positions across polychromatic wavelengths and multiple depth channels corrects chromatic dispersion, optical aberrations, and geometric distortions while incorporating eyebox deployment, depth representation, and hologram bandwidth, enabling apochromatic and high-performance holographic displays. Two prototypes, a full-color, large depth-of-field (DOF), large field-of-view (FOV) holographic near-eye display and a full-color, large FOV, multi-focus 3D holographic freeform augmented-reality (AR) near-eye display, validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework, providing valuable insights for advancing ergonomic holographic AR/virtual reality (VR) systems with realistic visual experiences. Holography enables modulation of light waves to create three-dimensional displays with natural depth cues. Here, authors propose an end-to-end design framework for computational holographic displays, achieving apochromatic, aberration- and distortion-corrected displays with depth perception.