The formation and erasure of photoinduced surface relief gratings (SRGs) on azobenzene-containing polymers are simulated using a calculation model based on the moving-particle semi-implicit method. For the convection calculation, an anisotropic diffusion model is proposed. The gradient force of the optical electric field and the influence of surface tension are considered as driving forces for photoinduced mass transport. The viscosity of polymer films changes with the light intensity in our model. Particle motions in SRG formation and erasure are calculated and the SRG pitch and polarization dependences of the SRG growing and erasing rates are investigated. These theoretical results coincide qualitatively with our experimental results.

Simultaneous recording of two data pages by dual-channel polarization holography is experimentally demonstrated. Two data pages are transferred as two orthogonal scalar wave components of a vector wave. The signal vector wave and reference beam are superposed on a polarization-sensitive medium. The two recorded data pages are simultaneously and independently reconstructed. Furthermore, holographic angular multiplex recording is performed.

A photoresponsive amorphous copolymer that consists of cyanoazobenzene and a large birefringent moiety with extended %-conjugation was recently designed and synthesized. It has been confirmed that this copolymer exhibits a very large optical rotation of 41 /mm under the optimized excitation conditions practically determined within our optical setup, i.e., 457.9 nm, 30 mW and ellipticity ¼ À0:5. The large rotation angle observed could be attributed to the increment of the order parameter of the polymer side chains promoted by the introduction of the extended %-conjugated moiety. Even more, the dependence of optical rotation on beam power, wavelength and ellipticity of the excitation beam has been examined. The phenomenon of photoinduced chirality in an azobenzene amorphous copolymer is discussed and analyzed on the basis of general ellipsometry by solving the transformation matrix of the sample.

This paper presents a method based on the use of an image sensor for obtaining the complex amplitudes of beams diffracted from an object at two different wavelengths. The complex amplitude for each wavelength is extracted by the Doppler phase-shifting method. The principle underlying the proposed method is experimentally verified by using the method with two lasers having different wavelengths to measure the surface shape of a concave mirror.

In this Letter, the principle of polarization holography for recording an arbitrary vector wave on a thin polarization-sensitive recording medium is proposed. It is analytically shown that the complex amplitudes of p- and s-polarization components are simultaneously recorded and independently reconstructed by using an s-polarized reference beam. The characteristics are experimentally verified.