Statistically stationary random light for high-security encryption
ShuQin Lin, Xinlei Zhu, Yijie Shen, Fei Wang, Xianfeng Chen, Gregory Gbur, Yangjian Cai, Jiayi Yu
Abstract
In the modern landscape of the internet, the secure storage and transmission of information are key objectives. Optical encryption is a long-standing method for improving information security; however, existing optical encryption strategies are unable to reliably recover encrypted information following free-space transmission. We propose an encryption protocol that utilizes the statistical features of random light fields to overcome the limitations of existing approaches. This protocol entails continuously refreshing the white complex noise to generate a colored complex noise set that carries encrypted information. Users can recover information by determining the spatial coherence structure of the ciphertext at the receiving end. Furthermore, the proposed protocol exhibits resilience against external noise attacks within the transmission channel, and the protocol’s unlimited key set makes it resistant to computer brute-force attacks. We hope that optical coherence engineering will extend the capabilities of existing optical encryption protocols, paving the way for future optical encryption technology.