Patent ID: 8189249

Claim:
A holographic storage system, with a coaxial arrangement of a reference beam and an object beam containing a data page of bright and dark pixels, wherein the reference beam and the object beam are superimposed on-axis and the phase of the bright pixels within the object beam is shifted relative to the phase of the reference beam such that, when superimposed, a wavefront of the bright pixels has a phase shift of .essentially pi relative to a wavefront of the reference beam, wherein for readout of a data page contained in a reconstructed object beam, which is obtained by a partial diffraction of the reference beam at a hologram, the reconstructed object beam is superimposed on-axis with the reference beam, a wavefront of the bright pixels of the reconstructed object beam having a phase shift of .essentially pi relative to a wavefront of the reference beam, and wherein a detector is provided for detecting an interference pattern generated by an interference between the reference beam and the reconstructed object beam.