Influence of light polarization on the diffraction efficiency of TIR holograms

Normally when forming a TIR hologram two interference gratings are stored in the recording medium. The object beam interferes with the incoming and with the reflected reference beam. An appropriate selection of the polarization orientations of the interfering light beams leads to the suppression of one of the grating systems. Even to reconstruct TIR hologram it is not all the same in which orientation the reconstructing laser beam is polarized. With the proper selection of the polarization orientations of the forming and reconstructing laser light the diffraction efficiency for TIR holograms can be optimized.