Patent ID: 8634119

Claim:
A holographic recording system, comprising: a holographic recording material comprising a photorefractive (PR) polymer; an electrode structure for receiving a voltage to apply an external electric field to the PR polymer; a laser that produces a coherent beam; a beam splitter that splits the coherent beam into an object beam and a reference beam, the intensity of the object beam is spatially structured with data for writing a hologram to form a modulated object beam; a beam steering mechanism that steers the modulated object beam and the reference beam relative to the holographic recording material to interfere at different places in the material to record one or more holograms, said modulated object beam and said reference beam producing a grating vector at an angle to the external electric field that controls a diffraction efficiency of the PR polymer; a first lens array that focuses the object beam on the recording material at multiple positions, said object beam spatially structured so that each position on the recording material corresponds to correct hologram data; a second lens array that splits the reference beam into multiple reference beams that are directed to the first lens array that collimates the multiple reference beams so that the multiple object and multiple reference beams interfere at the multiple positions on the material to write multiple holograms simultaneously; and a first holographic optical element (HOE) that diffracts one of the object or reference beams to reduce the angle between the grating vector and the external electric field and increase the diffraction efficiency of the PR polymer.