Image encryption using spatial nonlinear optics

Abstract Optical technologies have been widely used in information security owing to its parallel and high-speed processing capability. However, the most critical problem with current optical encryption techniques is that the cyphertext is linearly related with the plaintext, leading to the possibility that one can crack the system by solving a set of linear equations with only two cyphertext from the same encryption machine. Many efforts have been taken in the last decade to resolve the linearity issue, but none of these offers a true nonlinear solution. Inspired by the recent advance in spatial nonlinear optics, here we demonstrate a true nonlinear optical encryption technique. We show that, owing to the self-phase modulation effect of the photorefractive crystal, the proposed nonlinear optical image encryption technique is robust against the known plaintext attack based on phase retrieval. This opens up a new avenue for optical encryption in the spatial nonlinear domain.