Analysis of multiplexed holograms stored in a thick PVA/AA photopolymer

Multiplexing many holograms in photopolymers over 500 μm thick poses many problems associated with Beer’s law. In fact, the commercial holographic films (Aprilis and Inphase for example) are around 300 μm thick. For this range of thickness of absorbent photopolymeric materials, the gratings are recorded using all the thickness of the layer. Since the optical thicknesses of the multiplexed gratings are similar, it is easy to obtain an optimized time schedule to maximize the capacity of the material. For large thicknesses, the different effective optical thickness of each hologram requires an accurate prediction of each effective optical thickness in order to determine the minimum separation necessary between two consecutive multiplexed holograms. In this study, we have checked the experimental utility of the schedule model presented in a previous study to predict the multiplexing process of many gratings in a PVA/acrylamide photopolymer.