Theoretical and experimental studies of hologram multiplexing that uses a random wave front generated by...

A hologram multiplexing technique-that uses random wave fronts generated by photorefractive beam fanning is investigated. A storage photorefractive crystal generates various random wave fronts to be used as reference beams without the external diffusers such as ground glass and multimode optical fiber that are generally employed. We experimentally demonstrate hologram multiplexing with six images and show that the stored holograms can be selectively retrieved. We also simulate photorefractive beam fanning inside a BaTiO3 crystal, in particular regarding the correlation properties of the fanning beams for the first time to our knowledge, and reveal the conditions of incidence of an object beam and a reference beam required for suppressing image degradation, implementing low-cross-talk retrieval, and producing a large number of stored holograms.