Optical encryption is an increasingly significant technique in the realm of information security. In the recent decade, there has been considerable interest in using planar optics elements for information encryption. However, information leakage possibly occurs due to limited encrytion channels available for single‐layer devices. To circumvent this problem, a novel encryption method is put forward using secret sharing cascaded liquid crystal (LC) elements with spatial dislocation, which can produce near‐field patterns and far‐field holographic images under different illumination conditions. Specifically, Malus's Law and its inherent one‐to‐four mapping of rotational degeneracy, along with the Pancharatnam‐Berry (PB) phase introduced by LC molecules, to achieve multi‐channel encryption are utilized. Therefore, each cascaded LC unit can manipulate the amplitude and phase imparted to output light independently, thus only by obtaining both LC devices can decryption be realized. To further enhance the encryption security, the author purposely divide each LC device into multiple regions and find that the encrypted patterns can only be recovered when the two LC elements align precisely with a specific dislocation. These experimental measurements agree well with the design, thus demonstrating the strong encryption capability and broad application prospects of the design approach in the field of optical encryption with high cost‐effectiveness.

中文翻译：

---

基于空间位错秘密共享液晶元件的光信息加密

光加密是信息安全领域日益重要的技术。近十年来，人们对使用平面光学元件进行信息加密产生了很大的兴趣。然而，由于单层设备可用的加密通道有限，可能会发生信息泄露。为了解决这个问题，提出了一种使用具有空间位错的秘密共享级联液晶（LC）元件的新型加密方法，该方法可以在不同照明条件下产生近场图案和远场全息图像。具体来说，利用马吕斯定律及其固有的旋转简并一对四映射，以及 LC 分子引入的 Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) 相，以实现多通道加密。因此，每个级联的液晶单元可以独立地操纵输出光的幅度和相位，因此只有同时获得两个液晶单元才能实现解密。为了进一步增强加密安全性，作者特意将每个液晶器件划分为多个区域，发现只有当两个液晶元件与特定位错精确对准时才能恢复加密图案。这些实验测量与设计吻合良好，从而证明了该设计方法具有强大的加密能力和在光学加密领域具有高性价比的广阔应用前景。