3D holographic tech stores data in light patterns to shrink data centers

Researchers at Fujian Normal University in China, led by Professor Xiaodi Tan, have developed an advanced holographic data storage system that significantly increases data density by encoding information in three dimensions using multiple properties of light: amplitude, phase, and polarization. Unlike conventional storage methods that record data on surfaces, this approach stores overlapping light patterns throughout a material’s volume, enabling higher storage capacity and faster data transmission. The team overcame previous challenges in using polarization as an independent data dimension by refining tensor-based polarization holography, which preserves polarization states during data reconstruction. To implement this, the researchers created a 3D modulation encoding scheme with a double-phase hologram and a single phase-only spatial light modulator, enabling simultaneous encoding of amplitude, phase, and polarization. They also designed a convolutional neural network to decode these light properties from intensity-only images captured by conventional sensors, eliminating the need for complex measurements. This neural network-based decoding allows faster and more efficient data retrieval. The system was validated through a compact