Polarization Holography – a New Field of Holographic Research

In conventional holography, the polarization of the reference and object beams are arranged to be co-linear to achieve the maximum contrast of the interference fringes formed and record the greatest amounts of amplitude and phase information from the original object wave.

A field of holography that is receiving increasing interest looks at the effect of various polarization changes on the linear and nonlinear polarization characteristics of reconstructed waves under continuous exposure and during holographic recording and reconstruction.

The advances being made are largely due to the development of tensor theory that primarily focuses on the interaction between polarization waves and photosensitive materials. The practical applications for polarization holography are in holographic storage technology, multichannel polarization multiplexing, vector beams, and optical functional devices.