Image Amplification and Novelty Filtering with a Photorefractive Polymer

Arosha Goonesekera, Daniel Wright and W.E. Moerner

Energy transfer between two laser beams writing a volume hologram in a photorefractive polymer composite is applied to video rate optical processing applications. A net increase in image intensity as high as a factor of 37 can be observed within one video frame time (33 ms) using a total beam intensity of 1 Wcm^-2 and 77 Vmm^-1 applied electric field. Moving object detection (novelty filtering) is also demonstrated.