Encryption using chaotic dynamics for optical telecommunications

Chaos-based encryption appeared recently in the early 1990s as an original application of nonlinear dynamics in the chaotic regime. While the first experimental realizations were made in Electronics, the Optics community rapidly showed a strong interest in this new scientific application due to the well-known feature of Optics in the area of nonlinear phenomena. Numerous optical demonstrations have been performed, involving chaotic dynamics with particularly interesting properties in terms of chaos complexity, and also in terms of bandwidth i.e., encryption speed. This special issue gives a review of most of the current works on optical chaos dedicated to encryption. To cite this article: L. Larger, J.-P. Goedgebuer, C. R. Physique 5 (2004).