THE SPECTRAL HOLE-BURNING DEVICE - A 3-DIMENSIONAL PHOTON DETECTOR

We present the principles of a new device that combines a high-resolut ion spectrometer (0.001 nm spectral resolution, 10 nm bandwidth) with maximum efficiency, a large detector (pixel size 1 mu m by 1 mu m, ove rall size 2 cm by 2 cm), and a very high density data storage device ( up to 400 TB) in a single optical device. This device is based on pers istent spectral hole-burning in a dye-doped polymer at temperatures of a few K. It is called a Spectral Hole-Burning Device (SHBD) in analog y to Charge Coupled Devices (CCD). A SHBD can be thought of as a color film with extremely high spectral resolution: it records the intensit y in the visible or the near-infrared according to the two-dimensional position and the wavelength. Therefore it is a 3-dimensional photon d etector. We show first results from laboratory measurements that prove the feasibility of a SHBD.