Considering the dispersion effect of the grating media, the coupled wave theory of Kogelnik was developed to study the diffraction properties of an ultra-short pulsed laser beam with different polarization states by a photorefractive volume holographic grating. The spectral and temporal width, the distortion of the diffraction and transmission pulse beam, as well as the diffraction efficiency were studied, as a transmission volume holographic grating was illuminated by an ultrashort Gaussian-shaped pulsed laser beam and the ratio of the input laser beam spectral width and the effective diffraction spectral width of the grating varied. It was investigated that the effective diffraction spectral width of the volume grating was affected by the parameters of the grating and the input conditions, and decreased by the dispersion effect of the grating media. The effective diffraction spectral width of the incident pulse with polarization perpendicular to the incident plane was larger than that of the pulse with parallel polarization state, and with a relatively long pulse duration the diffraction efficiency of the former was larger than that of the latter. With a relatively large spectral width ratio, there appeared expansion and distortion for the temporal distribution curve of the diffraction beam, which were more obvious for the beam with polarization perpendicular to the incident angle.