Digital holographic storage system incorporating thermal fixing in lithium niobate

We describe a digital holographic data storage system that uses in situ thermal fixing to achieve nonvolatile readout. The system was used to store and fix 530 holograms representing 1.7 MB of digital data. The system demonstrates that fixing by heating after recording gives adequate performance for multiplex holography in the perpendicular recording geometry. The postrecording heating procedure is preferred over high-temperature recording in the perpendicular geometry to achieve Bragg matching for the entire signal angular bandwidth. (C) 1996 Optical Society of America