We propose a model system that allows communication of spatiotemporal information using an optical chaotic carrier waveform. The system is based on broad-area nonlinear optical ring cavities, which exhibit spatiotemporal chaos in a wide parameter range. Message recovery is possible through chaotic synchronization between transmitter and receiver. Numerical simulations demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed scheme, and the benefit of the parallelism of information transfer with optical wave fronts.

• Received 23 August 2000

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.5204