Branch photocycle technique for holographic recording in bacteriorhodopsin

摘要

A method of storing information in a protein-based medium having long-lived nonvolatile or near-nonvolatile states is disclosed. The method includes preexposing a bacteriorhodopsin medium to a preexposure pump beam for a predetermined length of time, providing a reference beam and a data beam from a coherent light source, the data beam being modulated to transmit data, and concurrently exposing the bacteriorhodopsin medium to the reference beam and the data beam for a length of time sufficient to form a holographic representation of the data in the medium and subsequently read the hologram. Also included is a method exposing the medium to essentially fully utilize the available index change and share the available index change between N multiplexed holograms in a holographic data storage system.