Essential Research Of The Theory Of Polarization Holography Based On The Circularly Polarized Wave

In conventional holography, the amplitude and phase variations between the signal and reference wave are recorded in an interference pattern. However, in the polarization holography, it employs waves with two different polarizations for recording information. In this case, not only the amplitude and phase but also the polarization states are to be recorded on the polarization-sensitive materials(anisotropic medium).For a long time, the polarization holography hasn’t attracted much interest due to the lack of a systematic theory. Although some theories for polarization holography have been proposed by several authors, unfortunately, most of them are quite complicated for the reason that the response of the recording material is described as a function of the canonical form of the polarization state. Moreover, it should assume the signal wave and reference wave propagate almost in parallel. Until recent years, a new tensor theory of polarization holography was proposed without the paraxial limitation. This theory is based on the photoinduced change of the dielectric tensor of the polarization sensitive materials. It is expressed as a function of the electric field in a general form. Using this expression, the vectorial coupled wave equations that describe the interaction of incident waves during the propagation in polarization holograms are derived.In this paper, the characteristics of the reconstruction of the polarization holography are studied on the basis of the tensor theory. We focus on the characteristics of the reconstruction of the polarization holography using the circularly polarized wave. Base on the tensor theory, we derived its properties theoretically. The result is that, in general, the polarization state of the reconstructed signal is different from the recorded signal. However, if a special condition is satisfied, it can be reconstructed faithfully by the illumination of the original reference wave. We discuss the special condition that the signal can be faithfully reconstructed. And in this condition we found that the reconstruction wave is disappeared when we use the orthogonal reference wave to reconstruct, we called this phenomenon null reconstruction. In order to verify the theoretical results, we designed an experimental program based on the orthogonal circularly polarized waves, and related experimental results show consistent trends with the theoretical results as well. Furthermore, by decomposing the reference wave into two orthogonal linearly polarized waves in the reconstruction process, we reveal that it is the destructive interference that rules the null reconstruction.