Diffraction efficiency of sequentially stored gratings in reflection volume holograms

On the basis of the theory of coupled waves the amplitudes of the first-order diffracted waves and the diffraction efficiency is calculated for sequentially superposed phase gratings stored in dielectric reflection holograms. The investigations are restricted to the case of a fixed reference wave during recording and Bragg-angle incidence.By analogy to the transmission volume grating the coupling effects which appear between incident beams and diffracted waves give the possibility of building up beam-couplers and -splitters with certain coupling parameters determined by the recording process. Moreover, reflection gratings allow a favourable combination between coupling and reflecting properties and avoid the diffraction efficiency oscillations that are characteristic of transmission gratings. The performance of the reconstruction process with several waves simultaneously allows the tuning of the intensities of diffracted waves with dependence on amplitude or phase differences between incident beams.