Polarization holography: orthogonal plane-polarized beam configuration with circular vectorial photoinduced anisotropy

This paper presents a complete model for the complex underlying mechanisms of vectorial holography using orthogonal S- and P-polarized beams. This configuration is of great interest, being the only one allowing creation of purely-vectorial holographic gratings. We model both the interference process and the material's photoinduced vectorial anisotropy using simple matrix formalism. We demonstrate further that combined linear and circular vectorial anisotropy makes the grating polarization-selective in diffraction allowing non-destructive polarization-measurement on the incident beam. This strict material condition explains the very few experimental successes previously reported. Appropriate material selection might open the path to complete non-destructive polarimetric solutions, polarization-discrimination or routing applications. The presented model can be easily extended further to other polarization configurations