Setting a disordered password on a photonic memory

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel optical encryption protocol using spatially disordered laser fields to enhance security in photonic memory, addressing data breach risks and improving encryption robustness.

Contribution

It presents the first theoretical scheme for encrypting optical memory with spatial disorder and explores a high-fidelity disordered echo memory for broadband storage.

Findings

Disordered laser fields effectively encrypt stored light pulses.

The proposed scheme offers long key lengths against brute-force attacks.

High-fidelity disordered echo memory approaches unity fidelity.

Abstract

Encryption is a vital tool of information technology protecting our data in the world with ubiquitous computers. While photons are regarded as ideal information carriers, it is a must to implement such data protection on all-optical storage. However, the intrinsic risk of data breaches in existing schemes of photonic memory was never addressed. We theoretically demonstrate the first protocol using spatially disordered laser fields to encrypt data stored on an optical memory, namely, encrypted photonic memory. Compare with a digital key, a continuous disorder encrypts stored light pulses with a rather long key length against brute-force attacks. To address the broadband storage, we also investigate a novel scheme of disordered echo memory with a high fidelity approaching unity. Our results pave novel ways to encrypt different schemes of photonic memory based on quantum optics and raise the security level of photonic information technology.