Demonstration of the temporal illusion and mosaic.

We introduce and experimentally demonstrate a flexible temporal illusion at telecommunication data rate in optical fiber communication system. The temporal illusion cannot only transform an event to another event as expected, but also mask the event with high-level signal, providing a novel method to conceal the confidential information. We successfully transform the output temporal waveforms of a return-to-zero (RZ), dark RZ and nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) event into that of any above modulation format event and high-level signal at different illusion bits and mosaic bits at a data rate of 5 Gb/s, respectively. Our works offer us new perspectives on illusion optics for falsifying event rather than object, which has potential applications in secure communication, data encryption and other military applications.