Experimental demonstration of data erasure for time-domain optical memories

Data erasure is considered an essential requirement for a practical optical time-domain memory, and it requires that the laser used have very good frequency stability. Such a laser is developed for this work, and data erasure is demonstrated with a sample of YSiO5: Eu3+ for write/rewrite pulse sequences of up to a duration of 100 mu s. This is two orders of magnitude longer than had been achieved previously. Phase-sensitive detection is introduced and is shown to be invaluable for monitoring the write, rewrite, and read processes. (C) 1999 Optical Society of America [S0740-3224(99)01305-3].