Diffraction properties of photoinduced gratings recorded by overlapping two coherent beams at 532 nm in nematic liquid crystals doped with Disperse Red 1 were investigated with a probe beam at 632.8 nm. The grating was formed due to the alignment of dye molecules that leaded to the reorientation of the liquid crystal phase. The diffraction efficiency of the photoinduced grating was found to inc...

We have made a diffraction grating in an indoline azobenzene/amorphous polycarbonate film by two-beam interference at 532 nm that periodically photodegrades the indoline azobenzene dye. Subsequent illumination of the film with 532-nm light into the trans-isomer band leads to trans-cis isomerization in the indoline azobenzene dye and results in a decrease in the trans-isomer band absorption coef...

Diffraction grating-based, wavelength dispersive high-resolution soft x-ray spectroscopy of celestial sources promises to reveal crucial data for the study of the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium, the Interstellar Medium, warm absorption and outflows in Active Galactic Nuclei, coronal emission from stars, and other areas of interest to the astrophysics community. Our recently developed critical-an...

An experimental and theoretical analysis is presented involving the effect of variation in fiber and beam diameter upon the determination of average sarcomere length in isolated single muscle fibers using laser light diffraction. The muscle diffraction phenomenon is simplified by first considering diffraction order position and intensity to be the result of grating and Bragg diffraction. It is ...

We describe a new biosensor immunoassay involving optical diffraction to detect clinically Important analytes in human body fluids. A siliconwafer is used as a support for immobilization of antigen or antibody. The protein-coated surface is illuminated through a photo mask to create distinct periodic areas of active and inactive protein. When the surface is incubated with a positive sample, ant...

In this paper, we report measurements of diffraction efficiency and angular dispersion for a large format (~ 25 cm diameter) Volume-Phase Holographic (VPH) grating optimized for near-infrared wavelengths (0.9 ~ 1.8 mum). The aim of this experiment is to see whether optical characteristics vary significantly across the grating. We sampled three positions in the grating aperture with a separation...

We investigate experimentally the influence of the grating reflectivity, grating resolution, and diode facet antireflection (AR) coating on the intrinsic linewidth of an external-cavity diode laser built with a diffraction grating in a Littrow configuration. Grating lasers at 399, 780, and 852 nm are determined to have typical linewidths between 250 and 600 kHz from measurements of their freque...

In atom optics a material structure is commonly regarded as an amplitude mask for atom waves. However, atomic diffraction patterns formed using material gratings indicate that material structures also operate as phase masks. In this study a well collimated beam of sodium atoms is used to illuminate a silicon nitride grating with a period of 100 nm. During passage through the grating slots atoms...

We measured the angular dependence of the 0th, +/-1 st, and +/-2 nd optical diffraction orders from a 50 microm thick transmission grating recorded in a UV-curable holographic polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (HPDLC) made from commercially available constituents. The analysis was performed for two orthogonal polarizations of the probe beams. The emphasis was laid on the temperature dependence o...

We report on measurements of the diffraction efficiency of 200-nm-period freestanding blazed transmission gratings for wavelengths in the 0.96 to 19.4 nm range. These critical-angle transmission (CAT) gratings achieve highly efficient blazing over a broad band via total external reflection off the sidewalls of smooth, tens of nanometer thin ultrahigh aspect-ratio silicon grating bars and thus c...