Computation of holographic patterns between tilted planes

Abstract

Computation of the diffraction pattern that gives the desired reconstruction of an object upon proper illumination is an important process in computer generated holography. A fast computational method, based on the plane wave decomposition of 3D field in free-space, is presented to find the desired diffraction pattern. The computational burden includes two FFT algorithms in addition to a shuffling of the frequency components that needs an interpolation in the frequency domain. The algorithm is based on the exact diffraction formulation; there is no need for Fresnel or Fraunhofer approximations. The developed model is utilized to calculate the scalar optical diffraction between tilted planes for monochromatic light. The performance of the presented algorithm is satisfactory for tilt angles up to 60°.