Abstract

Photorefractive lithium niobate (LiNbO₃) ia a promising material for holographic data storage due to its large dark storage time. To overcome the problem of erasure of the stored information during readout, two-color recording with cw laser light has been demonstrated in near-stoichiometric LiNbO₃¹ and in reduced congruent LiTaO₃² respectively. We present experimental results of nonvolatile holographic storage in near-stoichiometric copper-doped LiNbO₃. These crystals show an improved resistance against the erasure during reconstruction of stored holograms, and dark storage times of several months are obtained.

© 2002 Optical Society of America