Optical realization of 360° cylindrical holography

Abstract

Cylindrical holography has attracted widespread attention for its 360° look-around property. However, commercial cylindrical spatial light modulators(SLM) are not available. Additionally, on account of the heavy burden of memory space and computing time, the wavelength in the terahertz band rather than the visible light is employed in experiments. These two constraints are a great challenge to optical realization of cylindrical holography. By contrast, although curved holography, as a segment of cylindrical holography, can be realized optically to increase the field of view, the angle of view is still limited due to its intrinsic limitations. In this paper, an optical realization of 360° cylindrical holography is proposed by using isophase surface transformation within visible light with a 45° conical mirror and a commercial planar SLM. The diffraction formula of the proposed method is derived theoretically, and the feasibility of the proposed method is further demonstrated by numerical simulations and optical experiments. This brand-new method is expected to have practical applications in the field of cylindrical holography in the future.