Coherent writing and reading of information using frequency-chirped short bichromatic laser pulses.

We propose to use the sensitivity of the population transfer in three-level L-atoms to the relative phases and amplitudes of frequency-chirped short bichromatic laser pulses for coherent, fast and robust storage and processing of phase or intensity optical information. The information is being written into the excited state population which in a second step is transferred in a fast and robust way into a nondecaying storage level. It is shown that an arbitrary superposition of the ground states can be generated by controlling the relative phase between the laser pulses.