Demonstration of 8-Gbit/in.(2) areal storage density based on swept-carrier frequency-selective optical memory.

Using swept-carrier frequency-selective optical data storage techniques to record multikilobit-long data streams at single spatial locations, we have achieved an areal storage density of 8 Gbits/in.(2) and a density-input/output bandwidth product of 1.5 x 10(17) bits/(in.(2) s). The latter quantity is among the highest demonstrated in the context of nonparallelized two-dimensional optical or magnetic recording systems. Extrapolation of the present results to full material utilization suggests an achievable storage density of the order of 100 Gbits/in.(2).