Abstract

The proliferation of rare-earth dopants and host crystals, their spectroscopy, and development of matrix-type photodiodes to supply the read-write operations, all contributed to the research efforts producing a benefit for memory devices based on the phenomena of longterm stimulated photon echo (LPE). Nevertheless, to date there was a serious question about whether it is possible to selectively delete optical data in an arbitrary memory cell with random access. To our knowledge, the only method thus far used for data deleting is to heat the operating volume above the working temperature,¹ obviously leading to irreversible erasure of all information.

© 1993 Optical Society of America