What Will Holograms Be Used for in the Future?
Generated from the constructive interference of scattered light, holograms are three-dimensional representations of physical objects. To holographically capture an object, shine a primary light beam and a reference light beam onto its surface and record the reflected light on a photosensitive plate. Projecting a laser beam through the plate recalls the image at the recorded reference angle. Holography currently involves the disciplines of optics and chemistry, but in the future will become increasingly useful to computer science, biology and a wide variety of health science fields.
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Current Uses
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Since holography's rise to popularity in the mid-1960s, holograms have served predominantly as an art medium and as a component of security applications. Embossed holograms are found on credit cards, book covers, DVDs, clothing tags and on a variety of paper currencies. Holographic scanners also currently are used at check-out counters to read product bar codes.
Holographic Optical Elements
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According to Professor Tung H. Jeong of Lake Forest College and other scientists of the 2006 International Symposium on Display Holography, holographic optical elements (HOE) will replace glass and crystal as the material of choice for lenses, mirrors and diffraction gratings. Aside from the traditional 3D images represented in popular science fiction, HOEs also will include heads-up displays or holographic windshields, interferometric laboratory techniques used for nondestructive specimen analysis, and even measurement techniques able to image real-time plant growth via embedded optical fibers.
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Computers and Data Storage
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Holography will facilitate the invention of powerful computing systems known as optical or photonic computers. Optical computers will use holograms in circuitry to enable parallel processing, a data access technique that conceivably can "open" all of the stored data in an element at once. According to a Jan. 13, 2006, article by Chris MacKinnon in Processor magazine, holograms also will replace disc drives, microfilm and even flash memory as a data recording medium due to holography's intrinsically higher memory storage capacity.
Biomedical Imaging
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Biomedical applications encompass one of the most active areas of holographic research. Miniscule optical fibers embedded within your body will produce holograms of living tissue. Holography researcher Prakash Mehta, author of the 1993 book "Lasers and Holography," believes light holograms eventually will replace the radiation-causing X-ray as the energy medium of choice for internal scans.
Lasers
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Future holography development will allow engineers to construct and refine lasers capable of firing light pulses at very rapid rates. In the May 15, 2002, issue of Optics Letters, Toshihiro Kubota and Yasuhiro Awatsuji postulate that picosecond lasers, or lasers that can emit a light pulse in less than 1 trillionth of a second, will take "light-in-flight" measurements by recording three-dimensional, stop-action pictures of ultra-high-speed phenomena. The more advanced femtosecond laser, a laser able to emit a light pulse in 1 quadrillionth of a second, will make holograms through human tissue.
Physics Research
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In addition to light pulse lasers, holograms will measure some of the most elemental physical reactions. In a 1992 paper published through the photonics organization SPIE, researchers headed by Hans Bjelkhagen note the benefits conferred by holograms on the "bubble chamber holography" technique, which is able to visualize the creation and annihilation reactions of matter and antimatter.
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- Photo Credit austinevan: flikr.com
