Avoiding hologram bending in photorefractive crystals

Abstract

coupled-wave theory predicts the bending of recorded hologram phase planes in most photorefractive crystals. Bent holograms occur in LiNbO3 and other photovoltaic crystals that are particularly interesting as holographic storage media and result in a reduced overall diffraction efficiency. We show that hologram bending in LiNbO3 can be avoided or at least sensibly reduced by use of an actively stabilized recording technique. (C) 1996 Optical Society of America