Synthetic aperture Fourier holography for wide-angle holographic display of real scenes

A novel approach for wide-angle registration and display of digital holograms of static 3D scenes is presented. The registration setup design combines Fourier holography with the synthetic aperture technique, which results in recording performance of a wide spherically curved detector. The coherent object wavefield extracted from the synthetic exposition has a simple Wigner distribution function (WDF) representation and can serve as input for a variety of processing tools necessary to adopt the captured data for display in a chosen configuration. Here we use WDF diagrams for optimization of the 3D imaging space and as a basis for development of an aliasing-free numerical algorithm for adjustment of the magnification and axial position of the reconstructed image. The influence of the pixel size and wavelength mismatch between the registration and reconstruction systems is also discussed within the paraxial regime. For experimental tests we take a 60 megapixel synthetic aperture hologram of a bulk object recorded by use of a single spherical reference wave with divergence angle reaching 16°. The display system consists of six reflective liquid crystal on silicon spatial light modulators working in pure phase mode and illuminated by a single collimated beam.