Performances of holographic gratings monitored by laser-induced phase separation in liquid mixtures

We theoretically describe and experimentally explore the kinetics of holographic grating formation resulting from different laser-induced phase separation mechanisms. Our method makes use of two interfering c.w. laser waves to quench binary mixtures in composition, and to optically trap the nucleated domains on the fringes. Essentially, two different processes can lead to these variations in concentration: electrostriction and thermodiffusion. The former originates from induced dipolar couplings in a field gradient; as photopolymerization, this is a local process which is essentially sensitive to the q=q(0) Fourier mode forced by the fringe modulation. The latter corresponds to a variation in composition driven by a small thermal gradient; as solvent evaporation and thermal heating techniques, it is nonlocal and behaves as 1/q(2) because of its dissipative origin. By making experiments in both cases, we show that this q dependence on excitation has a strong influence on the performance of holographic gratings. While in the first case reflectivity saturates because the phase transition is confined by the fringes which behave as separated optical boxes with "soft walls" which calibrate the droplet size, blurring is expected for fringe-trapped domains induced by a nonlocal phase transition because the transition is governed by the Gaussian shape of the pump beams, and nucleated domains can reach a much larger size than the fringe spacing. The good agreement observed with our general model clearly illustrates how to make the difference between local and nonlocal excitations, and offers a first step towards a unified description of holographic grating formation monitored by phase transitions.