Efficient algorithms for the accurate propagation of extreme-resolution holograms

Display-sized full-parallax holograms with large viewing angles require resolutions surpassing tens of Gigapixels. Unfortunately, computer-generated holography is computationally intensive, particularly for these huge display resolutions. Existing algorithms designed for diffraction of typical Megapixel-sized holograms do not scale well for these large resolutions. Furthermore, since the holograms will not fit in the RAM of most of today's computers, the algorithms should be modified to minimize disk access. We propose two novel algorithms respectively for short-distance and long-distance propagation, and accurately compute the diffraction of a 17.2 Gigapixel hologram on a standard desktop machine. We report a 500-fold speedup over the reference rectangular tiling algorithm for the short-distance version, and a 50-fold speedup for the long-distance version.