SRGAN Algorithm-Assisted Electrically Controllable Zoom System Based on Pancharatnam-Berry Liquid Crystal Lens for VR/AR Display

Pancharatnam-Berry liquid crystal (PBLC) lenses with centimeter levels and high diffractive efficiency have seen enormous growth in recent years. However, their functionalities are often limited by fixed focal points and their inherent chromatic characteristics. Here, we break these bottlenecks by proposing a super-resolution generative adversarial network (SRGAN) algorithm-assisted achromatic electrically controllable zoom system based on a PBLC lens. The proposed zoom system allows for continuous zoom as the voltage changes and can achieve a 9× zoom ratio by combining liquid lenses and utilizing the bifocal PBLC lens. The experimental results reveal that the PBLC lens-based imaging systems exhibit lower spherical aberration and field curvature compared with the imaging systems based on traditional glass lenses. To solve the inherent chromatic aberration problem based on the PBLC lens, the SRGAN algorithm based on the PBLC lens imaging theory is proposed to mitigate the chromatic aberration inherent to the PBLC lenses, resulting in high-quality images. The proposed zoom system based on the large aperture PBLC lens, featuring continuous zoom capability, low chromatic aberration, spherical aberration, and field curvature, is an unprecedented promising candidate, which has competitive advantages over the existing vari-focal virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) display systems to solve the vergence-accommodation conflict problem.