A Revolutionary Laser Technology Allows Real-Life Sci-Fi Holograms

Most people wanted the holographic laser technology of science fiction movies where the image freely floats in the air. Well, sorry to disappoint you, we are not there yet. However, researchers at Brigham Young University came very close to that point. The team developed a technology called “Optical Trap Display” in which light is trapped and reshaped to represent the desired image or model.

As the “Smalley Holography” group, you can find all their work and their amazing gallery taken by Leia, their volumetric display named after Princess Leia from Star Wars from their website. Their findings of the optical trap displays are also published at Scientific Reports with the title of “Simulating virtual images with optical trap displays”.

How does the new laser technology work?

The technology works by “confining a particle in a photophoretic trap” in which the particles is “dragged” to draw the outline for the shape. And as the basic principle of creating a video or a still image, you draw the frames faster than your eye catches. In the end, you get an image or a moving video in the air drawn by a light particle. However, as the main problem of this new technology, the scaling is very small. Controlling the particle gets harder if OTD is scaled for bigger volumes, so for now, most images are kept within the 1 cubic centimeter volume range. The researchers are still pushing new solutions for scalability in laser technology.

As the method innately suggests, the new technology was named “Optical Trap Display” since it traps the light in a certain pathway to represent an image. You can read about it in detail in their research paper to give them support as well. Visit their gallery for stunning images.

Hologram fictional representation. Credit: Pixabay

The use cases

Well, for now, it does not seem very scalable. However, in their reporting video, the team actually creates a use case for movies and artworks with the help of perspective and parallax effects. Hologram technology is not very new, but previous versions are even less scalable than this one due to the high requirement for computational power.

So, it is natural to suggest that with good scalability solutions, this laser technology can be the first step in creating virtual reality in the real world, without the headsets and such. I have written about metaverse a lot of times in my previous articles, maybe it would be good to be in metaverse without getting skin rashes from the headsets. Anyways, it always puts a smile when sci-fi dreams become reality with this kind of laser technology and brilliant research.

Reference: Rogers, W., Smalley, D. Simulating virtual images in optical trap displays. Sci Rep 11, 7522 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-86495-6

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