Feature

Miniature Hologram on Optical Waveguide

Ming Li, National Research Council Canada, Institute for Microstructural Science, Ottawa, Canada, and Anders Larsson, Chalmers Univ. of Technology, Dept. of Optoelectronics, Gothenburg, Sweden.

A novel scheme to build a miniature, synthetic (or 'computer-generated') hologram on the surface of an optical waveguide has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Such a hologram is not much larger than the tip of a human hair. This new type of computer-generated hologram is capable of coupling light out of an optical waveguide, thereby leading to its name, off-plane computer-generated waveguide hologram (OP-CGWH), and simultaneously forming a predefined image at a certain distance above the waveguide surface.