Localized holographic recording in doubly doped lithium niobate

In:holographic data storage, pages of information are overlapped in the volume of the recording medium. Due to destructive read-out of holograms in photorefractive crystals such as LiNbO3:Fe, holograms are recorded with an exposure schedule in order-to equalize diffraction efficiency. This leads to a final diffraction efficiency proportional to 1/M-2 where M is the number:of exposures. Coherent erasure of a particular page also erases all the other pages stored in the same volume. We believe to have found a technique that does not require an exposure schedule and that can record M holograms with diffraction efficiency following a 1/M dependance. Our technique is based on non-destructive read-out in doubly-doped LiNbO3 [1]. The technique is based on the recording of localized holograms in thin layers across the volume of the crystal.