Lippmann photography approach in a page-oriented "holographic" data storage system
Abstract
Nowadays, holographic data storage is considered as one of the most serious candidates for the next generation of high capacity optical disks. In this paper, we present the study of a novel optical data storage system based on Lippmann photography. Interferential photography invented by Lippmann in 1891 was the first practical way of making colour photographs. Based on this technique, we propose to record wavelength-multiplexed data in a page-oriented architecture. Initially, we present numerical simulations with the aim to use thick media for the recording and exploring the theoretical capacity of storage, and we have demonstrated that with this architecture we can reach data capacities as large as for holography, of order of TeraBytes for an optical disk of 120 mm of diameter. Therefore, we describe the implementation of an experimental set-up for the recording and retrieval of many images using a resolution target, mask or SLM as data pages, a holographic material as recording medium and a CCD for the detection. With this novel architecture, we obtain experimental results that validate our previous theoretical approach. So, theory and experiment confirm the enormous potential of Lippmann technique for reaching very high capacities.