Abstract

We study the kinetics of both self-diffraction of recording beams and diffraction of an independent probe beam in the transmission thin grating (Raman-Nath) conditions on bacteriorhodopsin film. A moving grating technique is used. A drastic enhancement in the intensity of the first-order self-diffraction beams is obtained under the stepwise movement of the grating. It is shown that photorefractive grating in bacteriorhodopsin film is connected with both the refractive index (absorption) changes at the phototransition bR570⟺M412 and proton displacement during the proton pumping. The potentiality for the use of B-M-type photoinduced anisotropy based on both bR570 and M412 photocycle forms is demonstrated.

© 2001 Optical Society of America