General representation of interference contrast formed by arbitrarily polarized waves and its application in wave design for holographic fabrication of photonic crystals

A general formula of interference contrast formed by two arbitrarily polarized elliptical waves propagating along arbitrary directions in three-dimensional (3-D) space is derived. From it a series of inferences for the interference of linear and circular waves including their different combinations are obtained. These formulae are used for polarization optimization in three and four noncoplanar beam interference for the fabrication of 3-D periodic microstructures. The numerical calculations show that the use of circular light can improve the uniform contrast considerably compared with the use of only linear light, and the use of elliptical light may make the contrast even higher.