Holographic recording apparatus having a liquid crystal modulator including a diffuser with plural phase shift regions

A holographic image information recording apparatus comprising:

• a coherent light source;
• a beam splitter that splits the light from the coherent light source into an object beam and a reference beam;
• a polarizing device capable of fine-adjusting the polarizing direction of the object beam;
• a collimating optical system into which the object beam with its polarizing direction adjusted by the polarizing device is introduced;
• a liquid crystal device into which the object beam passing through the collimating optical system is introduced for transmission therethrough and which modulates the intensity of the transmitting beam in accordance with image data;
• a diffuser which has a plurality of phase shift regions arranged at a prescribed pitch and is disposed on an incident light side of the liquid crystal device, at least two of the plurality of phase shift regions of the diffuser being arranged in a manner to correspond to one pixel of the liquid crystal device;
• an interference optical system which causes the light emitted from the liquid crystal device to interfere with the reference beam separated splitter;
• and
• a means for recording the light produced as a result of the interference by the interference optical system.