Enhanced nondestructive holographic readout in strontium barium niobate

We describe a novel procedure for obtaining enhanced nondestructive holographic readout in SBN, where the key new ingredient is utilization of degrees of freedom in polarization of the reconstruction beam. The effect also involves spatial frequency and the applied voltage during both the recording and the reconstruction. The reconstructed beam first drops in intensity but subsequently grows in strength above the starting value, approaching 100% efficiency in some cases. More than 6 h of continuous readout has been achieved, with efficiency remaining strong enough to give more than 10(9) 10-microsec readouts with signal-to-noise ratios exceeding 20 dB.