title: Polarization holograms in a bifunctional amorphous polymer exhibiting equal values of photoinduced linear and circular birefringences.
abstract: Light-controlled molecular alignment is a flexible and useful strategy introducing novelty in the fields of mechanics, self-organized structuring, mass transport, optics, and photonics and addressing the development of smart optical devices. Azobenzene-containing polymers are well-known photocontrollable materials with large and reversible photoinduced optical anisotropies. The vectorial holography applied to these materials enables peculiar optical devices whose properties strongly depend on the relative values of the photoinduced birefringences. Here is reported a polarization holographic recording based on the interference of two waves with orthogonal linear polarization on a bifunctional amorphous polymer that, exceptionally, exhibits equal values of linear and circular birefringence. The peculiar photoresponse of the material coupled with the holographic technique demonstrates an optical device capable of decomposing the light into a set of orthogonally polarized linear components. The holographic structures are theoretically described by the Jones matrices method and experimentally investigated.
authors.affiliation: Physics Department and ‡IPCF-CNR LiCryL, University of Calabria , Ponte P. Bucci, Cubo 31C, 87036 Rende, Cosenza, Italy.
authors.forename: Clementina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Provenzano
authors.forename: Pasquale
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Pagliusi
authors.forename: Gabriella
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Cipparrone
authors.forename: Jorge
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Royes
authors.forename: Milagros
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Piñol
authors.forename: Luis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Oriol