Programmable synthetic temporal lattices for high-fidelity chaotic synchronization

In this paper, the authors demonstrate high-fidelity chaotic synchronization in a programmable synthetic temporal lattice and achieve accurate signal transmission for arbitrary-intensity messages using an alternate encoding strategy. By constructing a synthetic temporal lattice with truncated boundaries via coupled fiber loops and incorporating optoelectronic feedback to introduce controllable artificial nonlinearity, they generate discrete chaotic pulse sequences with tunable entropy. A chaotic synchronization scheme is then implemented within the same synthetic temporal lattice for signal transmission. In this scheme, each message bit is alternately loaded onto the chaotic carrier at single-pulse intervals, allowing the unmodulated carrier pulses at the transmitter to precisely drive synchronized chaotic pulses at the receiver. Experimental results show that nearly perfect synchronization and near-zero decoding error are achieved regardless of the injected message intensity. The study establishes a reconfigurable synthetic-dimensional platform for controllable optical chaos and its high-fidelity application in secure signal transmission.