Generation of circular polarization with an arbitrarily polarized reading wave

Polarization holography has attracted considerable attention in recent years, due to its capability of recording the polarization information in polarization-sensitive material. Particularly, the faithful reconstruction (FR) can retrieve the polarization information of the recorded signal. To date, studies referring to these topics mainly concentrate on the interference between the same type of polarization such as linearly, circularly, and elliptically polarized light. In addition, most of the reading wave is strictly limited to some specified polarization state to achieve the FR. Here, we apply the linearly polarized light as the reference wave to record the circularly polarized light, and then the circular polarization state would be faithfully reconstructed by the arbitrarily polarized reading wave. We theoretically analyze its polarization characteristic based on the tensor theory and experimentally verified the analytical results. This result further extending the FR in polarization holography, and provides a practicable way to generate circular polarization which is easily fabricated. Moreover, the work would lay a favorable theoretical foundation for the future preparation of circular polarization generator and discloses a new insight in polarization manipulation for tailoring the optical field.