Patent ID: 8199388

Claim:
A method for recording holographic storage media, comprising: illuminating an object to produce a modulated object beam; relaying the modulated object beam with a relay system to provide an output modulated object beam comprising an output image of the modulated object beam and an output Fourier transform pattern of the modulated object beam; directing the output modulated object beam to a holographic storage medium; propagating a reference beam to the holographic storage medium to record a resulting interference pattern between the output modulated object beam and the reference beam in the holographic storage medium, wherein the reference beam comprises a plane wave; forming an intermediate Fourier plane prior to the output Fourier transform pattern of the modulated object beam; disposing an aperture at the intermediate Fourier plane location; and recording holograms via polytopic multiplexing by translating the holographic storage medium with respect to the reference beam and output modulated object beam between holograms, wherein a beam waist of the output modulated object beam is positioned outside of the holographic storage medium when recording each of the holograms, wherein at least two of the holograms substantially spatially overlap within the holographic storage medium and wherein there is substantially no overlap in respective output modulated object beam waists used to record the at least two holograms.