Multi-color pulsed chaos enables single-pixel parallel laser ranging

Abstract Rapid progress of advanced laser sources has accelerated the development of laser ranging technologies, focusing on two comprehensive strategies: one is appealing to the promotion of measurement performances, and the other is simplifying the complexities of system architectures. Beyond the coherent-light counterpart, optical chaos originating from the laser nonlinear dynamics has fueled scenarios toward the parallel ranging for breaking the severe channel jamming. It has raised one striking question of how the “parallel chaos” could be upgraded and then reshape the light detection and ranging (LiDAR) ecosystem. Here, we introduce a multi-color pulsed chaos, by leveraging the accessible noise-like evolution in nonlinear dissipative systems to elevate a “single-pixel” architecture for parallel ranging. By the spectro-temporal manipulation, the broadband chaos can be tailored into multi-color parallelization without high-speed optoelectronics. Based on this chaos, the parallel ranging system achieves submillimeter-level ranging accuracy and throughput of hundreds of megahertz, as well as enabling a simplified architecture of a single transmitter, reference, and receiver. Our approach emphasizes the advancement in both the parallel ranging and the single-pixel architecture. Notably, the pulsed form of optical chaos offers revolutionary potential and catalyzes the progression of massively parallel ranging towards a new era.