Holographic recording and retrieval of polarized light by use of polyester containing cyanoazobenzene units in the side chain

We examined the holographic recording properties of polyester containing cyanoazobenzene units in the side chain. It was revealed that, when a linearly polarized object beam with an arbitrary polarization direction was recorded, the retrieved beam had the same polarization state as that of the object beam, with a constant diffraction efficiency of 0.1. Moreover, two object beams with mutually orthogonal linear polarization could be recorded and retrieved separately from the same area. This is, to our knowledge, the first example of holographic polarization multiplexing. The retrieved images were found to resolve details of similar to 40 line pairs/mm and a 40-mu m-pitched checkerboard pattern. The resolution of the system is limited by the CCD cameras that are used. Polarization encoding to increase the storage capacity and (or) the signal-to-noise ratio of holographic data recording is also discussed. (C) 1999 Optical Society of America. OCIS codes: 210.2860, 210.4810, 160.2900, 090.4220, 090.2900, 190.4710.