Abstract

Frequency-selective optical data storage (FSDS) provides for the heavy multiplexing of data at single spatial storage locations. The time-domain approach to FSDS offers in addition the possibility of extremely high data input/output rates. A newly proposed and demonstrated approach, swept-carrier optical memory,^1,2 includes frequency-domain and time-domain optical memory as limiting cases. A variety of technical problems must be resolved before the widespread implementation of FSDS memories becomes feasible. In the case of time-domain FSDS, for example, one must detect signal beams despite the presence of relatively strong memory readout beams in close temporal and spatial proximity. We demonstrate that this difficulty can be turned into an advantage in the case of the newly introduced swept-carrier approach to FSDS.

© 1995 IEEE