Subject Holographic displays have the potential to become the highest quality type of 3D display systems, as they account for all visual depth cues by reproducing the full wavefield of light, including both amplitude and phase information. Unlike stereoscopic or light field displays, holographic displays can reproduce correct focus cues, occlusion, and motion parallax simultaneously, making them a long-term target for immersive 3D visualization. Computer-generated holograms (CGHs) can reproduce full 3D scenes by encoding a physical interference pattern that reconstructs this complete wavefield. Fabricating such holograms physically imposes strict requirements on the computed fringe pattern: the hologram must be very large (gigapixel scale), encoded in a format compatible with the fabrication process (typically phase-only or binary amplitude), and optically correct across multiple wavelengths for color reproduction. While significant progress has been made in CGH algorithms, efficiently computing and optimizing large-scale holograms that meet these fabrication constraints remains an open challenge. This thesis investigates computational methods for generating high-resolution CGHs optimized for physical fabrication, with the goal of eventual printing in collaboration with external partners.

The student will first study wave optics, existing CGH algorithms, and the constraints imposed by physical fabrication processes such as binary quantization and phase-only encoding. Building on the research group's existing hologram generation pipeline, the student will investigate methods for scaling computation to very large hologram sizes, optimizing fringe patterns for binary or phase-only fabrication formats, and reproducing color through multi-wavelength hologram design. Large-scale holographic stereograms may also be explored as a computationally tractable approach to high-resolution 3D content. The work includes literature review, algorithm development and implementation in Python or CUDA, quantitative evaluation of reconstruction quality, and preparation of hologram data for external fabrication.

Matsushima, K. and Nakahara, S., "Extremely high-definition full-parallax computer-generated hologram created by the polygon-based method," Appl. Opt. 48, H54–H63 (2009).

David Blinder, Tobias Birnbaum, Tomoyoshi Ito, Tomoyoshi Shimobaba. The state-of-the-art in computer generated holography for 3D display[J]. Light: Advanced Manufacturing 3, 35(2022). doi: 10.37188/lam.2022.035

Strong programming skills (MATLAB or Python, C/C++)
Familiarity with 3D graphics or rendering is a plus, but not strictly required
Interest in experimental physical research and evaluation (visual and optical testing)