Controllable Optical Vortex Array for Image Encoding

Optical cryptosystems mostly use spatial distributions of amplitude, phase, and polarization of light to encrypt two-dimensional data/image. In this letter, we demonstrate the use of light carrying an array of optical vortices for image encryption. Spatially concatenated orthogonal states of optical vortices allow high-dimensional encoding and minimize the quality degradation during practical implementation. These features offer an efficient way to design an optical cryptosystem.

Automated summary

Optical cryptosystems use light properties to encrypt data, and this study introduces using an array of optical vortices for image encryption, which enables high-dimensional encoding and quality preservation.