Polarization and efficiency in magnetic holography

Reconstruction effects in a magnetic hologram can easily be interpreted if one assumes a linearly polarized plane wave readout beam. The field transmitted through or reflected off the hologram is rotated via the Faraday or Kerr effect. By decomposing the emerging field into two orthogonal components, one can define separate transmission functions for each polarization. The diffracted field and the efficiency of the magnetic grating are readily computed from these transmission functions. For a binary magnetic grating all diffraction orders, with the exception of zeroth order, are polarized orthogonally to the incoming polarization. For a sinusoidal magnetic grating, the various diffraction orders alternate in polarization with the zeroth order polarized in the same direction as the incoming polarization.