Micrometer-sized reflection holograms can be written into a rapidly rotating homogeneous photopolymer disk at the focus of a high-numerical-aperture beam and its retroreflection to implement high-capacity multilayer digital data storage. This retroreflection is generated by an optical system with positive unity magnification to ensure passive alignment of the counterpropagating beam. Analysis r...

Today's telecommunication is based on optical packets which transmit the information in optical fiber networks around the world. Currently, the processing of the signals is done in the electrical domain. Direct storage in the optical domain would avoid the transfer of the packets to the electrical and back to the optical domain in every network node and, therefore, increase the speed and possib...

We show that our recently reported microwave photonic jet technique for detection of deeply subwavelength pits in a metal substrate can be extended to optical wavelengths for purposes of high-density data storage. Three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain computational solutions of Maxwell's equations are used to optimize the photonic nanojet and pit configuration to account for the Drude...

A tutorial review is presented to inform and inspire the reader to develop and integrate strong scientific links between liquid crystals and holographic data storage, from a materials scientist's viewpoint. The principle of holographic data storage as a means of providing a solution to the information storage demands of the 21st century is detailed. Holography is a small subset of the much larg...

The principles of optical fiber communication and optical data storage have evolved over the past decade into industry standards for transmission, distribution, storage, and archival of digital audio, multimedia, and computer data. The fundamentals of these sophisticated systems are traditionally taught in the lecture hall, and laboratory exposure to the hardware is at the device rather than th...