Direct amplitude-only hologram realized by broken symmetry

Holographic displays have been a long-standing ambition for decades to realize true-to-life reconstruction. However, their practical adoption is hindered by their subpar image quality compared to two-dimensional displays, which is fundamentally limited by restricted spatial frequency bandwidth and artifacts. We address the limitation by using a symmetry-broken amplitude-only spatial light modulator, demonstrating image quality comparable to that of two-dimensional displays. The broken conjugate symmetry induced by phase noise of modulators eliminates conjugate image that causes issues in amplitude-only holograms and allows direct reconstruction without additional optical elements. The proposed method provides enhanced robustness against artifacts caused by sub-pixel structures of modulators, enabling experimental reconstruction of high-quality holograms. The full bandwidth and the robustness result in a 5-decibel improvement in peak signal-to-noise ratio compared to state-of-the-art holograms. Furthermore, the hologram has 24 times higher optical efficiency and a smaller volume than the traditional amplitude-only holograms while real-time synthesis is enabled by using a neural network.