Encrypting orbital angular momentum holography with ghost imaging

In this paper, we propose a multiple images simultaneous encryption scheme by encrypting the orbital angular momentum (OAM) holography with ghost imaging. By controlling the topological charge of the incident OAM light beam on the OAM-multiplexing hologram, different images can be selectively obtained for ghost imaging (GI). Followed by the random speckles illumination, the bucket detector values in GI are obtained and then considered as the ciphertext transmitted to the receiver. The authorized user can distill the correct relationship between the bucket detections and the illuminating speckle patterns with the key and the additional topological charges, so that each holographic image can be successfully recovered, while the eavesdropper can not obtain any information about the holographic image without the key. The eavesdropper even can not get clear holographic image when all the key is eavesdropped but without topological charges. The experimental results show that the proposed encryption scheme has a higher capacity for multiple images because there is no theoretical topological charge limit for the selectivity of OAM holography, and the results also show that the proposed encryption scheme is more secure and has a stronger robustness. Our method may provide a promising avenue for multi-image encryption and has the potential for more applications.(c) 2023 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement