Suppressing meta-holographic artifacts by laser coherence tuning

TL;DR

This paper presents a method using a degenerate cavity laser to tune spatial coherence, effectively eliminating artifacts in meta-holograms and enabling high-quality, compact holographic displays.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to suppress holographic artifacts by adjusting laser coherence, improving meta-hologram quality without complex fabrication changes.

Findings

Optimal coherence level removes artifacts effectively

Maintains image sharpness while eliminating defects

Enables dynamic, high-quality holographic displays

Abstract

A metasurface hologram combines fine spatial resolution and large viewing angles with a planar form factor and compact size. However, it suffers coherent artifacts originating from electromagnetic cross-talk between closely packed meta-atoms and fabrication defects of nanoscale features. Here, we introduce an efficient method to remove all artifacts by fine-tuning the spatial coherence of illumination. Our method is implemented with a degenerate cavity laser, which allows precise, continuous tuning of spatial coherence over a wide range with little variation in emission spectrum and total power. We find the optimal degree of spatial coherence to remove the coherent artifacts of a meta-hologram while maintaining the image sharpness. This work paves the way to compact and dynamical holographic display free of coherent defects.