Optical damage as a computer generated hologram recording mechanism

In this paper we report optical damage as a bulk glass recording process. We used a 10 Hz, 35 picoseconds, 5 mJ polarized Nd:YAG pulse laser focused using a 25 mm lens to create 50 μm average optical damage spots to record a computer generated hologram embedded in stress free BK-7 glass. It was observed that for the recording conditions the material surrounding the damage spot was induced birefringence altered producing a 70 μm pixel optimal separation.