Temperature dependence of optical anisotropy of holographic polymer-dispersed liquid crystal transmission gratings

We measured the angular dependence of the 0th, +/- 1st, and +/- 2nd optical diffraction orders from a 50 mu m 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 of the grating anisotropy. Above the nematic-isotropic phase transition, the grating is optically isotropic. At lower temperatures the grating strength for the optical polarization perpendicular to the grating vector decreases with decreasing temperature, while for orthogonal polarization it increases with decreasing temperature. As a consequence, a regime of diffraction with strongly overmodulated gratings is observed. Our investigations indicate that the anisotropy of the refractive-index modulation scales with the optical anisotropy of the liquid crystal medium forming the phase-separated domains. We further demonstrate that light scattering effects, which are profound only in the nematic phase, must not be neglected and can be taken into account via a Lorentzian line-shape broadening of the probing wave vector directions in the framework of the diffraction theory for anisotropic optical phase gratings.