Polarization-holographic gratings that form plane-polarized orders of diffraction

摘要

This paper discusses polarization-holographic gratings that make it possible to decompose the light incident on them into an orthogonal basis of plane polarization. It is shown that the functioning of various types of gratings substantially depends on the characteristics of the polarization-sensitive recording medium; in particular, for media with a small gyrotropic reaction, it is impossible to obtain a grating that forms diffracted beams of mutually orthogonal plane polarization. It is proposed to use two gratings recorded with parallel plane-polarized beams so that the beams diffracted by the first grating, are plane polarized and their polarization is orthogonal to the polarization of the beams diffracted by the second grating. It is shown that such gratings can be obtained on actual polarization-sensitive materials. The results of experimental studies are presented. (C) 2006 Optical Society of America.