Speckle Reduction for Holographic Display Using Optical Path Difference and Random Phase Generator

In this paper, we present a concept for speckle reduction using optical superposition instead of temporal superposition. The proposed speckle reduction method does not contain any mechanical movement nor time-multiplexing technique. Therefore, the system is stable and free from the frame rate degradation or additional computation load. In addition, the angle diversity method is adopted with the proposed method to intensify the speckle reduction. In order to apply the angle diversity method, the required minimum angle difference is analyzed theoretically. To realize the proposed speckle reduction concept, the system is implemented with practical optical components. The system includes an echelon, which is a stair-shaped glass and a static diffuser. The echelon is employed to decrease the spatial coherence of the incident beam. The static diffuser imposes the band-limited random phases on each of the split beams that have passed through the echelon. Also, the static diffuser is used to combine mutually incoherent split beams into a single speckle-reduced beam. The proposed speckle-reduced light source is applied to the holographic display to demonstrate the speckle reduction effect. Experimental results show that the speckle contrast of the reconstructed image is reduced by 55%.