Scientists in China have created a 3D holographic storage system that boosts data density and speeds up retrieval.
Researchers in China have unveiled a holographic data storage system that uses multiple properties of light, including amplitude, phase and polarization to store and retrieve information in three dimensions.
Led by Xiaodi Tan, PhD, a professor at Fujian Normal University in China, the team found a novel way to pack significantly more information into the same physical space compared to conventional storage methods.Holographic data storage is an advanced optical technology that uses laser light to store digital information inside a material. Instead of storing data on a surface like a hard drive or optical disc, it records overlapping light patterns throughout the material’s volume.This results in higher storage density and faster data transmission. “Based on the principle of polarization holography, we used a deep learning architecture known as a convolutional neural network model to enable the use of polarization as an independent information dimension,” Tan said. Storing data in lightHolographic data storage captures information as image-like pages produced by laser light patterns. Encoding turns digital data into these pages, while decoding converts them back into user data.Until now, however, most holographic storage systems have relied on one or two dimensions of light for encoding. Incorporating polarization as a third channel has been difficult due to challenges in reliably preserving and decoding the data.To tackle the issue, the team refined a technique called tensor-based polarization holography. It reportedly preserves polarization states during data reconstruction. This allows it to work as a stable and independent dimension for encoding data. The team built a 3D modulation encoding scheme by controlling the intensity and phase across two orthogonal polarization states using a double-phase hologram. It enabled a single phase-only spatial light modulator to encode amplitude, phase and polarization.To make the system practical, the scientists also designed a convolutional neural network capable of decoding the light properties simultaneously by utilizing only intensity images captured from the system.Conventional sensors can only spot light intensity. By training the neural network on diffraction patterns, one captured with a polarizer and one without, the system can reconstruct full 3D data without complex measurements.Putting holography to useThe team validated the theory and developed a compact setup to record and reconstruct the encoded optical field in a polarization-sensitive medium. They analyzed the images to extract amplitude, phase, and polarization signatures.These were then fed into a neural network to reconstruct 3D data from intensity-only measurements. “Overall, our results showed that multidimensional joint encoding substantially increased the information carried by a single holographic data page, thereby improving storage capacity,” Tan highlighted. Tan noted that neural network–based simultaneous decoding removes the need for complex measurements and step-by-step reconstruction. This enables faster readout and more efficient decoding. This, in turn, paves the way for practical, high-capacity, high-throughput holographic storage.The team involved in developing the new holographic data storage approach.Credit: Xiaodi Tan, Fujian Normal University in ChinaHe believes this multidimensional holographic storage could shrink data centers, improve large-scale archiving, and boost processing and transmission efficiency. “It could also contribute to safer data transmission, optical encryption and advanced imaging,” he concluded in a press release. While the system is still at the research stage, the team aims to increase coding gray levels to boost capacity and improve the recording media’s stability, uniformity and repeatability. They also plan to integrate volumetric multiplexing for multi-page, multi-channel storage.The study has been published in the journal Optica.
3D Holography China Computing Data Centers Innovation Optical Data Storage Photonics Photonics Breakthrough Physics Science
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