Optical design for page access to volume optical media

4F lens designs are optimized for parallel access to volume holographic memories. Aberrations, diffraction, and component tolerancing are considered for their impact on parallelism, crystal information density, and overall system storage density. We find that a parallelism of ≥ 10(5) bits per page and a crystal information density of ≈2 Mbits/mm(3) are achievable with standard optical elements and that advanced designs offer significant improvements. Crystal surface tolerance measurements show that a diffraction-limited performance is achievable over apertures of 7.1 mm for LiNbO(3) and 1.5 mm for KNSBN(60). Lens-tolerancing simulations show that lens decenter degrades peak parallelism and peak crystal information density. Anew nonconfocal 4F system design with improved performance is presented.