Abstract

The potential advantages of volume holographic data storage have long been recognized -parallel fashion of data transfer and large storage density (~V/λ3). However, wether the technology will success or fail in commercialization also depends on practical issues such as system size and cost. Ever in its early days, volume holographic data storage has basically relied on one of the two fundamental system architectures, i.e., Fourier transform and imaging holograms. In these conventional systems, the reference beam reconstructs the hologram by forming a virtual holographic image and thus a lens is needed to form a real image on the CCD detector. With the increasing demand for high resolution (>Mbits per hologram) for the goal of terabyte memories, conventional systems are starting to show limitations such as lens-limited resolution, alignment difficulties and too large a size for practical holographic memories.

© 1996 Optical Society of America