Sidelobe suppression of spectral response in holographic optical filter

In order to suppress sidelobes of holographic filter's spectral response we propose to use weighting of grating intensity distribution along light propagation. This can be realized in photorefractive material (for example in LiNbO3:Fe) by using spatial selective decaying of conventional uniform grating by illumination of light through some transparent mask. Experimental results show that it is able to obtain 8 dB improvement of sidelobe level compared to uniform grating. But it is accompanied by 1.7 times expansion of main lobe and two times decrease of diffraction efficiency. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.