A new organic material for polarization holographic recording--azo-dye methyl-orange, introduced in polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)--is fabricated and investigated. It possesses all the good characteristics of the known polarization-sensitive materials--high sensitivity, reversibility, etc.--but excels them substantially in the magnitude of the photoinduced birefringence: delta n > 10(-3). This makes possible the recording of reversible polarization gratings with diffraction efficiency over 30%. Depending on the conditions of production and subsequent mechanical and thermal treatments the layers of methyl orange/PVA may also have intrinsic birefringence. In this paper the results of experimental investigations into the properties of this new material are reported.

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We report here a light-induced phenomenon—a self-induced rotation of the azimuth of elliptically polarized light passing through photobirefringent azopolymers. The experiments are carried out with films of amorphous and liquid-crystalline polymers. It has been shown that the induced rotation angle depends on the ellipticity of the input light. A theoretical analysis of the phenomenon has been done and it has been shown that light induces chiral structure in the polymer films.

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