<title>Holographic Optical Elements</title>

Abstract

During the past ten years there has been an increasing interest in the imaging properties of point-source holograms. Now, the capabilities (and difficulties) of holographically-formed optical elements are fairly well defined, and several applications have been discussed. In this article I survey the current technology and applications of Holographic Optical Elements (HOEs), viewed as components of a general optical system. The recent development of HOEs has followed Gabor's principle of wavefront reconstruction (holograms).(I) The important aspect of this development was the study2yf imaging (3) properties and aberrations of point source holograms, notably by Meier' ' and Champagne. It was the ability to analyze and compensate aberrations,Oat permitted a quantitative consideration of holograms as optical elements by Latta.") Practical HOEs became possible with the development of appropriate ray tracing techniques,(5-7) and high-efficiency hologram recording materials.(8,9)