Announcing a new publication from Opto-Electronic Technology; DOI 10.29026/oet.2026.260018.

In today's global wave of digitalization, information security has become a core issue concerning the national economy and people's livelihood. Relying on the inherent advantages of multi-dimensional physical attributes of light waves (such as amplitude, phase, polarization, and orbital angular momentum) and high-speed parallel processing, optical encryption technology has become a crucial means to safeguard information security. However, traditional optical encryption systems are mostly built on the coupling mechanism of "global Fourier transform." This traditional architecture is not only vulnerable to iterative retrieval algorithms but also severely restricted in its encryption key space, making it difficult to meet the growing demands for high capacity and high security. How to break through the physical limitations of global coupling—where "a slight move affects the whole"—and achieve independent control of multiple degrees of freedom at the microscopic scale, thereby realizing optical encryption with a larger key space and higher security, is a critical scientific issue and application challenge currently urgent to be resolved in this field.

To address the aforementioned bottlenecks, the research team led by Prof. Junle Qu from the Medical Photonics Innovation Institute of Shenzhen University, in collaboration with the team of Mengzhe Shen and Dapeng Wang from BGI Research, proposed the concept of a "vectorial optical pen" and achieved a multiple degrees-of-freedom optical encryption system with pixel-resolved resolution for the first time.

The "Vectorial Optical Pen": A Leap from "Broad-Brushing" to "Fine Brushwork"
If traditional holographic encryption is akin to "broad-brushing" on a canvas, the "vectorial optical pen" technology achieves "fine brushwork" creation in the optical domain. Relying on this concept, researchers can independently and precisely control multiple degrees of freedom of the focus on the imaging plane, such as its spatial location, polarization, and orbital angular momentum. This method of decoupling spatial distribution from multiple physical dimensions effectively eliminates coherent crosstalk between different modes in the structure, establishing a physical foundation for high-capacity information encryption.
"Double-Lock" Encryption: Absolute Security at the Physical Level
Utilizing the multiple degrees-of-freedom encoding mechanism of the "vectorial optical pen," the research team successfully verified a set of high-security encryptions. (1) Encryption side (Locking): Researchers convert the information to be encrypted (e.g., letters "S", "Z", "U") into ASCII codes, customize the degrees of freedom of individual optical focuses reasonably, and ingeniously encode these digital information into the holographic phase to form the ciphertext. This is equivalent to setting a unique "lock" for every single pixel. (2) Decryption side (Unlocking): Only when the incident light simultaneously possesses the correct polarization state and orbital angular momentum (OAM) parameters can it serve as a "key" to open this lock, allowing the optical field to interfere correctly and extract the encrypted information. Incorrect parameters will lead to severe distortion of the optical field, making it entirely undecipherable, which strictly guarantees the reliability of encryption at the physical level.

To further verify the anti-jamming and anti-decryption capabilities of the encryption scheme, the research team conducted a rigorous quantitative probability analysis combined with a morphological crossing-feature extraction algorithm, independently calculating the recognition probability distributions of decrypted results under different orders of incident light. The quantitative data confirmed the extremely low crosstalk of the encryption method. The ultimate joint decoding probability further validates the high robustness of the system, providing a practical and feasible scheme for developing high-capacity, high-security micro-optical information encryption systems.

Financial Support: We are grateful for financial supports from the National Key R&D Program of China (2024YFF0507202); National Natural Science Foundation of China (62550186, 62375183, T2421003, 62127819); Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Photonics and Biophotonics (ZDSYS20210623092006020); Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Biomedical Optics and Molecular Imaging (ZDSY20130329101226215); Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (JCYJ20241202124801002, JCYJ20230807153500001).

Keywords: optical encryption, vectorial holography, optical pen
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Xiaoyu Weng is a Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the Medical Photonics Innovation Institute of Shenzhen University. His research primarily focuses on light field manipulation and optical imaging. He has led several major projects, including the Excellent Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Original Exploratory Program projects, and key tasks under the National Key R&D Program of China. He has been awarded the First Prize of both the Natural Science Award and the Technology Invention Award from the Chinese Society for Optical Engineering.
Dapeng Wang received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Bedfordshire, UK. He is currently an Associate Research Fellow at the State Key Laboratory of Multi-dimensional Analysis Technology for Genomics, BGI Research. His research interests primarily lie in nanophotonics and biophotonics. He has led and participated in multiple research projects funded by the National Key R&D Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and Shenzhen Science and Technology Program. He has published over 30 SCI/EI-indexed papers and holds 9 authorized patents. He has won the Clarivate Highly Cited Paper Award 7 times, the Hot Paper Award once, and the Outstanding Paper Award of Opto-Electronic Engineering
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Opto-Electronic Technology (OET) is an international, peer-reviewed and open access English language journal. OET publishes reviews, research articles and letters covering engineering technologies and applications of optics, photonics and optoelectronics.
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Peng JZ, Zhou HX, Shen MZ et al. Multiple degrees-of-freedom optical encryption via pixel-resolved vectorial holography. Opto-Electron Technol 2, 260018 (2026). DOI: 10.29026/oet.2026.260018