Aberration-free pupil steerable Maxwellian display for augmented reality with cholesteric liquid crystal holographic lenses

Maxwellian displays offer unique features like always-in-focus quality, high efficiency, and large field-of-view, but its small eyebox remains a major challenge for augmented reality. To enlarge the eyebox, pupil steering is a promising approach. However, previous pupil steering methods generally rely on changing the incident light angle on the lens coupler, which results in serious aberrations. In this Letter, we demonstrate a pupil steerable see-through Maxwellian display incorporating novel cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) holographic lenses. By actively modulating the polarization state of the incident light, we can schematically choose which holographic lens to function, which fundamentally eliminates the aberrations. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America

Automated summary

Maxwellian displays offer unique features such as always-in-focus quality, high efficiency, and large field-of-view, but their small eyebox presents a major challenge for augmented reality. A promising approach to enlarge the eyebox is pupil steering, and using novel cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) holographic lenses can fundamentally eliminate aberrations in pupil-steerable see-through Maxwellian displays by actively modulating the incident light's polarization state.