Abstract

One important possible application of photon echoes is all-optical data storage. Photon echoes have a number of advantageous properties that make diem very good candidates for such applications, such as high areal density (1 Tb/cm² has been projected [1], which should be compared with approximately 1 Mb/cm² for commercially available CMOS memories today) and readout speeds >THz have been experimentally demonstrated [2]. We have addressed the problem of how to selectively erase data bits stored using photon echoes. One solution to this problem is to coherently add a new echo, phase shifted 180 degrees relative to the original echo, and thus achieve selective erasure of data [3].

© 1996 IEEE