In this thesis I present the analyses, simulations and demonstrations of a number of novel optical signal processing systems, which are designed to explore the large bandwidths (10's--100's of GHz), time-bandwidth products (105 and greater) and massive spatial parallelism that spatial-spectral holography and photon-echo (PE) processing can provide. The systems investigated include RF spectrum analyzers, a time-integrating correlator, an RF-array multibeam imager, and a high-bandwidth LIDAR range-Doppler processor, all of which were built around a Tm3+:YAG crystal as the spatial-spectral holographic (SSH) medium. The time-integrating correlator (TIC) is the first SSH experiment that illustrates spatial coherence across parallel channels of PE processors. In this experiment, ∼150 SSH gratings with linearly increasing time-delays are recorded in the SSH, which, when read out, result in the scanned output required for the TIC. In the high-bandwidth RF spectrum analyzer; the spectral components from an RF signal are modulated onto an optical carrier and burned into the spectrally selective absorption band of the SSH. This altered absorption profile is then recovered by a frequency-swept source and a high dynamic range, low bandwidth detector. This is the first experimental SSH system to process RF signals with bandwidths in excess of 10 GHz, and was enabled by a novel linearized readout technique. In the LIDAR experiment, the Doppler and range information of targets is encoded in the position and spectral period of sinusoidal SSH gratings. These gratings (spanning ∼16 GHz) are snapped out with the linearized readout technique and post processed to recover the Doppler and range of the targets. The required experimental infrastructure and the spectrally-linearized chirped readout laser are discussed in detail.
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