This proposal requests equipment to improve the facilities for an advanced undergraduate laboratory in optics offered at Cal Poly. The equipment is primarily to teach the physics associated with volume holography and introduce physics and engineering students to the technologically important area of layered dielectric media. Students will holographically record gratings in photopolymer and characterize the gratings as a function of index modulation, thickness of medium, angle of incidence and wavelength of replay. Fundamental physical concepts such as the angular spectrum, phase matching and Bragg scattering will be demonstrated and the students will become acquainted with the notions of coupled wave theory.
