Yihong WU¹ and Chong Tow CHONG²

¹Department of Electrical Engineering, ²Data Storage Institute, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260

(Received October 21, 1996; Accepted December 13, 1996)

Calculations have been done for the modulation transfer function of a superresolution optical disk with a combination of optical path filtering and saturable absorption techniques. The results reveal that optical path filtering alone can only equalize, to a certain degree, the spatial frequency response of the optical disk system, but it can not attain any response beyond the cutoff frequency. With an additional saturable absorption layer in-between the substrate and the information layer, it is found that the optical response both under and beyond the cutoff frequency can be greatly improved.

Key words : optical disk, superresolution, optical path filtering, saturable absorption