Modeling the grating-formation process in thick bacteriorhodopsin films.

We model the grating-formation process in bacteriorhodopsin films for the interference of two plane waves. We simulate the temporal dependence of grating recording and readout, and we examine the behavior of the diffraction efficiency with respect to exposure, write and read wavelengths, and film parameters such as initial optical density and lifetime of the upper state. Gratings written in thick bacteriorhodopsin films are generally nonuniform and nonsinusoidal owing to the absorption and saturation properties of the material. The simulations also show that one can often obtain optimization of hologram recording and readout by writing and reading at wavelengths far off the peak of the ground-state absorbance spectrum, especially for films with high values of the peak optical density.