Abstract

One very exciting application of laser spectroscopy would be to use the high-resolution capabilities of today’s lasers and the phenomenon of persistent spectral hole-burning to form a frequency domain optical storage system.¹ In such a system, bits of information would be stored by locally modifying (in the frequency domain) the shape of an inhomogeneously broadened absorption line of an absorber in a solid at low temperatures. Because typical homogeneous widths are 1000X (or more) narrower than typical inhomogeneous widths, as many as 1000 bits could be written in one diffraction-limited 1-μm spot In a sample, yielding the impressive storage density of 10¹¹ bits/cm².

© 1983 Optical Society of America