Pulse shaping properties of multilayer reflection volume holographic gratings under an ultrashort pulsed beam with arbitrary temporal shapes

Abstract

In this paper, the pulse shaping and diffraction properties of multilayer reflection volume holographic gratings under ultrashort pulse with arbitrary shapes in time are investigated using the modified multilayer coupled wave theory. Bragg diffraction of a system of multilayer reflection volume holographic gratings (MRVHG) is derived, and simple analytical expressions for the spectrum and spatial profiles of the transmitted and diffracted beams are obtained. Numerical results of the pulse shaping and diffraction properties of this system are also illustrated for several different temporal shapes.Results show that the temporal shapes of the input pulsed beams have been found to be an important factor in the analyses of the pulse shaping and diffraction properties of MRVHG. The analysis and observations of this paper will be valuable for optimizing the design and for novel applications of optical elements based on multilayer volume gratings.