Volumetric bubble display

To develop a volumetric display of the kind we see in science fiction movies is a dream of many display researchers, including us. Here, we show a new volumetric display with microbubble voxels. The microbubbles are three-dimensionally generated in liquid by focused femtosecond laser pulses. The use of a high-viscosity liquid, which is a key part of the development of this idea, slows down the movement of the microbubbles, and, as a result, volumetric graphics can be displayed. This volumetric bubble display has a wide-angle view, simple refreshing, and no addressing wires, since the transparent liquid is accessed optically rather than electronically. It achieves full-color graphics composed of light-scattering voxels controlled by illumination light sources. Furthermore, a holographic laser drawing method based on a computer-generated hologram displayed on a liquid-crystal spatial light modulator controls the light intensity of the microbubble voxels with an increase in the number of voxels per unit time and the spatial shaping of the voxels. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America