The analysis of dependence of diffraction efficiency on duty cycle and modulation depth of phase gratings with rectangular and Gaussian profile was performed by means of specially designed program. An Angular Spectrum method applied for monochromatic light propagation in far field through phase grating was used for calculation of diffraction efficiency of gratings. Diffraction efficiency maps of 0-5th diffraction orders were obtained for different grating profiles. It is shown that changing the duty cycle of grating makes it possible to tune smoothly the diffraction efficiency and to redirect the light intensity in required orders.

It is well known that azobenzene-containing polymers (azopolymers) are sensitive to the polarization orientation of the illuminating radiation, with the resulting photoisomerization inducing material transfer at both the meso- and macroscale. As a result, azopolymers are efficient and versatile photonic materials, for example, they are used for the fabrication of linear diffraction gratings, including subwavelength gratings, microlens arrays, and spectral filters. Here we propose to use carbazole-containing azopolymer thin films to directly visualize the longitudinal component of the incident laser beam, a crucial task for the realization of 3D structured light yet remaining experimentally challenging. We demonstrate the approach on both scalar and vectorial states of structured light, including higher-order and hybrid cylindrical vector beams. In addition to detection, our results confirm that carbazole-containing azopolymers are a powerful tool material engineering with the longitudinal component of the electric field, particularly to fabricate microstructures with unusual morphologies that differentiate from the total intensity distribution of the writing laser beam.

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