RADIOFREQUENCY MATCHED FILTERING BY PHOTOREFRACTIVE OPTICAL HOLOGRAPHY

Matched filtering of megahertz-bandwidth signals by use of holograms r ecorded in a photorefractive crystal is demonstrated. Holographic reco rding of rapidly varying signals has heretofore been hampered by the r elatively slow response of photorefractive crystals. For the first tim e, to our knowledge, syn chronization between waveforms and short opti cal sampling pulses is used with acousto-optic electrical-to-optical c onversion to build up static holograms of rf waveforms in a SBN crysta l. Readout with a continuous input signal yields a time-resolved corre lation with stored waveforms. (C) 1997 Optical Society of America.