Use of film waveguides in optoelectronic devices for reading information stored in holograms

An investigation was made of the possibility of direct transmission of a reference signal from a semiconductor laser to a hologram through a film waveguide. The losses of the laser radiation in the waveguide were investigated and the polarization characteristics of the light emerging from the waveguide were determined. Radiation produced by an injection laser and passed through a film as one of the guided modes was capable of reconstructing a hologram with an information density of ~10⁴ bits/mm².