Switchable Diffractive Elements and Applications to Holographic and Multi-layer Optical Storage

Abstract

Electrically switchable holograms or diffractive optical elements have recently been demonstrated in a fine-grained polymer dispersed liquid crystal material, giving a basis for a new family of compact, nonmechanical wavefront control devices well suited for applications in optical data storage. Examples of potential applications for both holographic volume storage and multilayer disk storage systems will be presented, and current experimental status summarized.