A holographic recording and reproducing apparatus includes a support portion for detachably supporting and rotating the recording medium; a recording-reference-light-beam-supplying-portion for supplying a coherent recording reference light beam propagating along an optical axis to a major surface of the recording medium; a signal-light-beam-supplying-portion for supplying a coherent signal light beam which is modulated in accordance with image data, in an optical path into the recording medium; a reproducing-reference-light-beam-supplying-portion for supplying into the recording medium a coherent reproducing reference light beam propagating in an opposite direction along the optical axis of the recording reference light beam to generate a phase conjugate wave from a refractive-index grating of the light interference pattern; a splitting portion for splitting the phase conjugate wave from the optical path of the signal light beam to image a dot pattern with the phase conjugate wave; a photo-detecting portion for detecting the dot pattern imaged with the phase conjugate wave to reproduce the image data. |