Spatial resolutions for applying photorefractive polymers to diffractive elements

Spatial resolutions of diffracted beams by photorefractive polymers are investigated in detail for applying the polymers to diffractive optical elements. The coupled wave equations for the four-wave mixing in photorefractive polymers and their solutions by applying the two-beam coupling approximation are derived taking the orientational enhancement effect into consideration. Characteristics of the diffraction efficiency of the polymers for the applied electric field, the incident angles of beams, the incident radiation intensity and the polarization are clarified. Furthermore, resolutions of diffracted images with the polymers are discussed by a numerical analysis from the viewpoint of the Bragg diffraction in a spatial frequency domain. An experiment with the TPD (tetra-phenyl-diphenyldiamine) acrylate based photorefractive polymers and the USAF test target is also performed to measure the spatial resolution of two-dimensional images diffracted by the polymer and to verify the calculated results. It is r...