Coherent erasure and processing in time-domain optical storage

Persistent spectral hole-burning and photon echoes can provide insight into the dynamics of amorphous and crystalline materials on the molecular/atomic level. Part of the current interest in these methods, however, is also caused by the existence of potential applications in optical data storage and processing. At present it may be difficult to specify exactly at what applications these techniques should try to target but, based on current research efforts and results, it appears that persistent spectral hole burning is a possible candidate for high density, possibly long time, volumetric storage, while photon echoes have properties more attractive for short time storage or storage connected to processing applications.