Optical communication based on tunable intensity vortex arrays

Current research on vortex arrays primarily focuses on controlling degrees of freedom such as topological charge, spatial position, and polarization. In contrast, the intensity between individual focal points has not been systematically established as an independent and designable information dimension. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate tunable intensity vortex arrays (TIVA) — a type of vortex array in which the intensity at each focal point is independently tunable. By optimizing the phase superposition weight coefficients through a physics-informed neural network, precise intensity control at arbitrary ratios across all focal points is achieved. Experimental results show that for the 8-focal-point TIVA configuration, the maximum normalized root-mean-square error (RMSE) remains below 3.94%, demonstrating high precision and robustness. The flexible focal intensity control of TIVA introduces a new degree of freedom compared to traditional vortex arrays. Based on this, we further implement joint topological charge-intensity encoding and experimentally demonstrate image transmission and reconstruction, with a decoding accuracy of 99.95%, indicating promising potential for optical encryption and information transmission.