Abstract

Angularly multiplexed volume holograms¹ are considered for use in optical memory systems where compactness and high storage density are desired features. In such a memory system, an object beam containing a page of information is recorded in association with a uniquely oriented reference beam in a volume recording material such as photorefractive crystals. The procedure is repeated with different sets of object and reference beams to yield a volume memory in which a particular page of information can be uniquely accessed by reading the hologram with the corresponding reference beam. The largest amount of information that such a system can store is upper-bounded by the geometric factor O(V/λ₃) where V is the volume of the holographic medium and λ is the wavelength of light.² A tighter upperbound can be derived by considering the limitations of the medium.³ In this paper, we consider the storage density limiting effects due to crosstalk between the stored pages during readout. We review some earlier work done in this area⁴ and present new theoretical and experimental work that characterizes the storage capacity limitations from the crosstalk.

© 1991 Optical Society of America