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Advanced Photonics Nexus

Quasi-periodic optical key-enabled hybrid cryptography: merging diffractive physics and deep learning for high-dimensional security

Yu Feng Shao, Haiqi Gao, Jiaming Liang, xuehui Wang, Junren Wen, Yuchuan Shao, Yueguang Zhang, Weidong Shen, Chenying Yang

Published Mar 23, 2026• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Optical encryption inherently provides strong security advantages, with hybrid optoelectronic systems offering additional degrees of freedom by integrating optical and algorithmic domains. However, existing optical encryption schemes heavily rely on electronic computation, limiting overall efficiency, and the physical keys are susceptible to damage, compromising both security and system stability. To overcome these challenges, we introduce the quasi-periodic optical key (Q-POK), which combines long-range order with short-range disorder, enabling enhanced security and robustness against damage within a single platform. By leveraging diffraction symmetry, our design enables optics-driven encryption, effectively shifting the optoelectronic balance toward photonic processing. Moreover, we innovatively apply deep learning to reconstruct the complex optical ciphertext field using only amplitude data and cryptographic keys, simultaneously achieving data compression and improved security. Within this framework, the key space includes continuously tunable parameters such as wavelength, propagation distance, phase modulation, and Q-POK geometry, significantly expanding cryptographic diversity. Our system also demonstrates robust cryptographic reliability by reducing inter-class distances by over 50% and tolerating up to 20% ciphertext loss. Our framework represents a generation of physically grounded, algorithmically enhanced optical cryptosystems—laying a foundational pathway for scalable, hardware-integrated information security paradigms.

DOI
10.1117/1.apn.5.3.036006

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Optical encryption inherently provides strong security advantages, with hybrid optoelectronic systems offering additional degrees of freedom by integrating optical and algorithmic domains. However, existing optical encryption schemes heavily rely on electronic computation, limiting overall efficiency, and the physical keys are susceptible to damage, compromising both security and system stability. To overcome these challenges, we introduce the quasi-periodic optical key (Q-POK), which combines long-range order with short-range disorder, enabling enhanced security and robustness against damage within a single platform. By leveraging diffraction symmetry, our design enables optics-driven encryption, effectively shifting the optoelectronic balance toward photonic processing. Moreover, we innovatively apply deep learning to reconstruct the complex optical ciphertext field using only amplitude data and cryptographic keys, simultaneously achieving data compression and improved security. Within this framework, the key space includes continuously tunable parameters such as wavelength, propagation distance, phase modulation, and Q-POK geometry, significantly expanding cryptographic diversity. Our system also demonstrates robust cryptographic reliability by reducing inter-class distances by over 50% and tolerating up to 20% ciphertext loss. Our framework represents a generation of physically grounded, algorithmically enhanced optical cryptosystems—laying a foundational pathway for scalable, hardware-integrated information security paradigms.
Optical encryption inherently provides strong security advantages, with hybrid optoelectronic systems offering additional degrees of freedom by integrating optical and algorithmic domains. However, existing optical encryption schemes heavily rely on electronic computation, limiting overall efficiency, while the physical keys are susceptible to damage, compromising both security and system stability. To overcome these challenges, we introduce the Quasi Periodic Optical Key (QPOK), which combines long range order with short range disorder, enabling enhanced security and robustness against damage within a single platform. By leveraging diffraction symmetry, our design enables optics-driven encryption, effectively shifting the optoelectronic balance toward photonic processing. Moreover, we innovatively apply deep learning to reconstruct the complex optical ciphertext field using only amplitude data and cryptographic keys, simultaneously achieving data compression and improved security. Within this framework, the key space includes continuously tunable parameters such as wavelength, propagation distance, phase modulation, and Q-POK geometry, significantly expanding cryptographic diversity. Our system also demonstrates robust cryptographic reliability by reducing inter-class distances by over 50% and tolerating up to 20% ciphertext loss. Our framework represents a new generation of physically grounded, algorithmically enhanced optical cryptosystems, laying a foundational pathway for scalable, hardware-integrated information security paradigms.
Data proliferation in the digital age necessitates robust encryption techniques to protect information privacy. Optical encryption leverages the multiple degrees of freedom inherent in light waves to encode information with parallel processing and enhanced security features. However, implementations of large-scale, high-security optical encryption have largely remained theoretical or limited to digital simulations due to hardware constraints, signal-to-noise ratio challenges, and precision fabrication of encoding elements. Here, we present an optical encryption platform utilizing scattering multiplexing ptychography, simultaneously enhancing security and throughput. Unlike optical encoders which rely on computer-generated randomness, our approach leverages the inherent complexity of light scattering as a natural unclonable function. This enables multi-dimensional encoding with superior randomness. Furthermore, the ptychographic configuration expands encryption throughput beyond hardware limitations through spatial multiplexing of different scatterer regions. We propose a hybrid decryption algorithm integrating model- and data-driven strategies, ensuring robust decryption against various sources of measurement noise and communication interference. We achieved optical encryption at a scale of ten-megapixel pixels with 1.23 µm resolution. Communication experiments validate the resilience of our decryption algorithm, yielding high-fidelity results even under extreme transmission conditions characterized by a 20% bit error rate. Our encryption platform offers a holistic solution for large-scale, high-security, and cost-effective cryptography.
Abstract Optical encryption is an emerging technique that uses optical systems to securely encode and decode information for data transmission. In this study, we present an integrated optical encryption platform that consists of a scattering-augmented ptychographic encryption system, a transmission-efficient compressive sampling strategy, and a high-capacity decryption algorithm based on a hybrid model-data driven approach. Our encryption system leverages random light scattering as a physical unclonable function, enabling the encoding of complex object wavefronts with high optical throughput. In contrast to traditional encoders that offer insecure pseudo-randomness, the light scattering process ensures true randomness in the reported platform. To optimize transmission efficiency, we implement a compressive sampling strategy that reduces data transmission volume by at least one order of magnitude. Moreover, we devise a decryption algorithm that merges model-driven optimization with data-driven deep learning, effectively addressing the highly underdetermined retrieval task and providing robust decryption against various measurement noise and communication interference. The efficacy of our system is corroborated by an integrated optical prototype capable of encrypting ten million of pixels within minutes. Communication experiments confirm the resilience of our decryption algorithm, which retrieves high-fidelity results even under extreme transmission conditions characterized by a 20% bit error rate. Our innovative encryption technique presents a comprehensive solution for high-capacity data transmission, fortified by scattering-augmented security.
The rapid globalization of the digital ecosystem has elevated information security to a critical concern in modern society. Optical encryption offers an effective approach for enhancing information protection; however, existing optical encryption strategies are unable to reliably recover encrypted information following free-space transmission. To address this challenge, we propose a novel protocol named the optical coherence engineering encryption protocol (OCE-Encryption Protocol). By jointly manipulating the optical coherence structure and introducing astigmatic phase modulation, the protocol generates a spectral intensity ciphertext capable of secure free-space transmission. At the receiver, the original information can be accurately reconstructed by measuring the optical coherence structure of the received ciphertext and applying the correct decryption key. Furthermore, the proposed protocol demonstrates strong resilience to transmission channel disturbances. We hope that optical coherence engineering can expand the functional boundaries of existing optical encryption protocols and provide a pathway toward next-generation secure optical communication systems.
The optical network supporting emerging bandwidth-intensive services has become the cornerstone of the 5G era. However, the development of optical fiber eavesdropping and quantum computing has brought huge security challenges to traditional cryptography. As an effective approach to improving optical layer transmission security, all-optical logic gate encryption has important research significance. This paper proposes a high-speed coherent optical encryption and decryption system based on phase encoding with all-optical logic gates. The system ingeniously designs the phase encoding and decoding scheme between two quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) signals, which doubles the encryption and decryption efficiency. In addition, the integration of physical-layer key distribution (PLKD) and physical-layer encryption (PLE) contributes to a reduction in overall system complexity. By adopting real-time signal processing in an all-optical domain, the single-wavelength rate of system security communication can reach 100 Gbps. The system is also applicable to other phase-modulated signals and provides a feasible scheme to enhance transmission security in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks featuring high speed, low latency, and high flexibility.
Abstract We propose a comprehensive and efficient optical-cryptographic encryption scheme to improve the security of vulnerable optical encryption systems. Based on cryptography theory, we increase data protection using diffusion-confusion processes acting in the input and output of the optical encryption scheme. The new enhanced ciphertext has attributes of a one-way function that is easy to achieve but almost impossible to revert without the correct random phase masks used for diffusion-confusion operations. Despite the straightforward design, combining optical, cryptographic, and chaos methods increases the number of encryption–decryption keys raising two significant concerns. First, the management and transmission of several keys carry a high storage footprint, and second, it impairs the optical high-speed information processing capability. We overcome these two drawbacks by applying a new optical keystream synthesizer based on the stochastic speckle nature and a maximum entropy constraint in a forward–backward propagation algorithm. This new approach quickly replicates the necessary keystream in the encryption–decryption stations offering higher security and efficiency than other reported systems. We validate the feasibility of this proposal by synthesizing an experimental keystream and performing 24-bit data encryption–decryption. Then, we verify the security improvement of two vulnerable cryptosystems and their robustness against cryptanalysis attacks. Finally, we perform experimental encryption–decryption.