Abstract

Theoretical and experimental studying of the vectorial wave mixing in the photorefractive crystal in the reflection geometry without applying an external electric field is presented. We demonstrate that small phase modulation of the object wave is linearly transferred into the intensity modulation of the output beam without any auxiliary polarization element but just mixing light waves with different polarization states (e.g., elliptical and linear). Geometry in which anisotropic diffraction occurs was chosen. The linear phase demodulation occurs because the inherent π/2 phase difference between orthogonal components of elliptically polarized wave is transferred into the interference term of the transmitted object and diffracted reference waves.

© 2005 Optical Society of America