Ultrahigh-speed optical encryption enabled by spatiotemporal noise chaffing

作者：Jianyang Shi, Chaoxu Chen, Haoyu Zhang, Penghao Luo, Wei Yuan, Fang Dong, Ziwei Li, Chao Shen, Haiwen Cai, Junwen Zhang, Xinyuan Fang, Nan Chi, Miṅ Gu · 发表于：Nature Communications · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1038/s41467-025-65111-5 · 被引用次数：5 · 研究领域：Neural Networks and Reservoir Computing、Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics、Chaos-based Image/Signal Encryption

Optical encryption provides strong physical-layer security but is limited by the slow response of spatial light modulators. We propose and experimentally demonstrate a spatiotemporal noise chaffing system inspired by the “chaffing and winnowing” principle for ultrahigh-speed temporal encryption. By exploiting the symmetric spatial properties and orthogonality of conjugated orbital angular momentum (OAM) states, high-speed temporal signals (“wheat”) and spatial noise (“chaff”) are simultaneously encoded. This mechanism suppresses information leakage by degrading the temporal signal-to-noise ratio while enabling authorized recovery. Furthermore, a variable-weight multimodal OAM (VW-multimodal OAM) scheme combined with a multimodal generation neural network (MGNN) exponentially expands the key space beyond 10¹⁰. Experimentally, a record secure transmission rate of 1.25 Tbps per mode is achieved in an eight-channel wavelength-division-multiplexed coherent link. The product of rate and key space surpasses existing methods by five orders of magnitude, establishing a new photonic-security paradigm for future ultrafast and secure communication networks. Optical encryption provides strong data protection but has been limited by the modulating bandwidth of spatial devices. Here, the authors demonstrate a spatiotemporal noise chaffing system using conjugated orbital angular momentum modes to achieve terabit-per-second secure transmission and expand the encryption key space beyond 10¹⁰.