Recently, Professor CAI Yangjian 's team published an article titled "Unlocking Secure Optical Multiplexing with Spatially." in the renowned international optical journal Laser & Photonics Reviews (impact factor 9.8) The research paper "Incoherent Light" innovatively proposed and implemented the incoherent optical field multiplexing technology, providing a brand-new solution for the new generation of multi-channel optical information multiplexing and communication with ultra-high security, large capacity and high robustness.

Previously, the team conducted coherent structure encryption for some coherent light fields (PhotoniX 2021, DOI: 10.1186/s43074-021-00027-z, Opto-Electronic Science 2023, DOI:) 10.29026/oes.2023.220024), far-field image transmission (Opto-Electronic Advances 2021, DOI: 10.29026/oea.2021.210027) and coherent polarization multiplexing of images (PhotoniX 2024, DOI: Technologies such as 10.1186/s43074-024-00126-7 have proposed new dimensions and methods for light field regulation, expanded the new degrees of freedom of structured light fields, and achieved multi-dimensional and efficient collaborative regulation. During the research process, the team discovered that the orthogonality of the degrees of freedom of the traditional coherent light field can achieve multi-channel multiplexing, but it relies on first-order determined optical parameters and is extremely sensitive to environmental disturbances. However, the coherent structure of the non-coherent light field belongs to the high-order optical parameters of the light field. When used for information loading, its channel capacity is limited to a single channel. The existing multiplexing technologies are difficult to expand effectively and are hard to meet the constantly growing demand for information transmission capacity in the current era of big data.

In response to this issue, the team further innovatively proposed an incoherent reuse scheme and technology. This scheme achieves concealed storage that cannot be directly detected by traditional cameras by securely encoding information in the field correlation of multiplexing, and can only be restored through strict statistical reconstruction methods. Benefiting from the inherent incoherence characteristics of random waves, this method has the advantage of no crosstalk in principle and can maintain high fidelity even in a strong noise background. This work not only provides a new technical approach for fields such as optical encryption and imaging, but also offers an important reference for conducting information processing research using random waves with different physical properties such as sound waves and matter waves.

Liu Xin, a doctoral student from Shandong Normal University, is the first author of this paper. Professor Sergey Ponomarenko from Dalhouse University in Canada, Professor CAI Yangjian and Professor Liang Chunhao from Shandong Normal University are the co-corresponding authors of the paper. The related research has received multiple grants, including the National Key Research and Development Program, the Major Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Major Research Program.