Paradigms for bit-oriented holographic information storage.

One of the difficulties encountered during the many years of research on holographic information storage was the lack of an easy theoretical way to assess proposed paradigms. I exploit the fact that for bit-oriented holographic storage, Gaussian beams are usually involved. For this case I show that the reconstructed wave can be represented as a superposition of simple Gaussian beams, regardless of the exact recording condition, and a virtual source for this wave can be determined. This theoretical result is used to explore several holographic storage architectures, in particular thick volume holograms and layered volume holograms. Simulation results demonstrate the power of the method, show good correspondence with earlier experimental studies, and provide clues for further developments.