A novel see-through virtual retina display (VRD) system is proposed in this Letter. An optical fiber projector is used as the thin-light-beam source, which is modified from a laser scan projector by separating the laser sources and the scan mechanical structure. A synthetic aperture method is proposed for simple, low-cost fabrication of a volume holographic lens with large numerical aperture. These two key performance-enhanced elements are integrated into a lightweight and ordinary-glasses-like optical see-through VRD system. The proposed VRD system achieves a weight of 30 g and a diagonal field of view of 60°.

Controlling both amplitude and phase of light in the subwavelength scale is a challenge for traditional optical devices. Here, we propose and numerically investigate a novel plasmonic meta-hologram, demonstrating broadband manipulation of both phase and amplitude in the subwavelength scale. In the meta-hologram, phase modulation is achieved by the detour phase distribution of unit cells, and amplitude is continuously modulated by a T-shaped nano-cavity with tunable plasmonic resonance. Compared to phase-only holograms, such a meta-hologram could reconstruct three-dimensional (3D) images with higher signal-to-noise ratio and better image quality, thus offering great potential in applications such as 3D displays, optical communications, and beam shaping.

A band-stop angular filter (BSF) based on hump volume Bragg gratings (HVBGs) is proposed. Band-stop filtering in a two-stage amplifier laser system is discussed and simulated. Simulation results show that small-scale self-focusing effects in the laser system can be effectively suppressed with the BSF due to the control of fast nonlinear growth in a specific range of spatial frequencies in the laser beam. Near-field modulation of the output beam from the laser system was decreased from 2.69 to 1.37 by controlling the fast nonlinear growth of spatial frequencies ranging from $0.6~\text{mm}^{-1}$ to $1.2~\text{mm}^{-1}$ with the BSF. In addition, the BSF can be used in a plug-and-play scheme and has potential applications in high-power laser systems.

It is shown that orbital angular momentum (OAM) is a promising new resource in future classical and quantum communications. However, the separation of OAM modes is still a big challenge. In this paper, we propose a simple and efficient separation method with a radial varying phase. In the method, specific radial varying phases are designed and modulated for different OAM modes. The resultant beam is focused to the spots with different horizontal and vertical positions after a convex lens, when the coordinate transformation, including two optical elements with coordinate transformation phase and correct phase, operates on the received beam. The horizontal position of the spot is determined by the vortex phases, and the vertical position of the spot is dependent on the radial varying phases. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed method is feasible both for separation of two OAM modes and separation of three OAM modes. The proposed separation method is available in principle for any neighboring OAM modes because the radial varying phase is controlled. Additionally, no extra instruments are introduced, and there is no diffraction and narrowing process limitation for the separation.

This paper presents progress on the characterization of guided-wave light modulators for use in a low-cost holographic video monitor based on the MIT scanned-aperture architecture. A custom-built characterization apparatus was used to study device bandwidth, RGB operation, and linearity in an effort to identify optimal parameters for high bandwidth, GPU-driven, full-color holographic display.

Surface stabilized (anti) ferroelectric liquid crystal cells can be used as an optically addressed media for optical data processing. The structure of the cell has to contain a photo sensible agent, i.e., an absorbing dye-doped orienting layer. The all-optical generation of the diffractive grating can be done due to the switching parameters of the smectic slab within cells with a sensitive layer. This Letter considers a study of the optically induced charge generation into the dye-doped layer, and the explanation of the phenomena of the selective molecular director reorientation, while cell driving what leads to the induction of phase grating.

We propose and demonstrate free-space optical data links based on coaxial sidelobe-modified optical vortices (CSMOVs). In contrast to the optical communication systems based on amplitude, frequency, or phase detection, the proposed scheme uses the radii ratio between the principle ring and the first sidelobe of the CSMOV. Therefore, the demand of stringent alignment and/or accurate phase matching is released. We design and optimize a composite computer-generated hologram to generate a CSMOV with four topological charges (TCs). Extracted from the images captured by a CCD camera, the radii ratio between the principle ring and the first sidelobe of different TCs are consistent with the theoretical values.