ULTRAFAST TIME-AND-SPACE-DOMAIN HOLOGRAPHY BY SPECTRAL HOLE-BURNING IN DYE-DOPED POLYMERS

Certain photochromic materials exhibit at liquid-helium temperature a special property of very high selectivity in frequency dimension, This phenomenon, commonly known as spectral hole burning (SHB), makes it p ossible to extend conventional spatial-domain optical data storage int o the dimensions of frequency and time. We have applied SHB for ultraf ast recording of holograms and coherent optical processing on the time scale of 10(-12)-10(-13) s. To achieve ultrafast performance in the ti me domain. we use special organic dye-doped polymer materials, which p rovide SHB recording in a broad optical band width of 5-10 THz. In thi s paper, we discuss recording and playback of holograms of pico-and fe mtosecond time-and-space-domain signals using dye-doped SHB polymers a t liquid-helium temperature, We discuss unusual properties of SHB holo grams such as causality-related asymmetry of diffraction and inversion of the time coordinate, ultrafast frequency-domain processing, and as sociative recall of events.