Patent ID: 7595923

Claim:
An apparatus for reading from and/or writing to holographic storage media, with a collinear arrangement of one or more reference beams and an object beam or a reconstructed object beam, having an optical system for recording and/or reading holograms, the optical system being a 12f-system having three pairs of objectives, the first member of each pair of objectives generating the Fourier transform of an object and the second member re-transforming the object, the optical system having three dedicated planes in confocal arrangement, the three dedicated planes being a central and a first and a second outer dedicated plane, said holograms being located near the central dedicated plane, wherein the optical path of the one or more reference beams is combined with the optical path of the object beam at the first outer dedicated plane, and wherein the optical path of the one or more reference beams is separated from the optical path of the reconstructed object beam at the second outer dedicated plane.