Influence of atmospheric turbulence on the propagation of quantum states of light carrying orbital angular momentum

Abstract

We analyze the influence of atmospheric turbulence on the propagation of an optical vortex beam having the form V(r,theta)=A(0)e(imtheta). The probability that a detected photon after propagating through the atmosphere has the same value of the orbital angular momentum as the launched photon is found to be given by s(0)=[1+(1.845D/r(0))(2)](-1/2), where D is the aperture diameter and r(0) is the Fried coherence diameter. These vortex beams behave very similarly to Laguerre-Gauss beams under the influence of atmospheric turbulence. These results have important implications for atmospheric laser communication systems that employ quantum encryption.

Orbital-angular-momentum entanglement in turbulence

“…(17) to infer an expression for the random phase function, similar to the way we obtained the expression for δn in Eq. (12). The expression is…”

“…Previous theoretical studies of the effects of atmospheric turbulence on the OAM modes have considered the effect of turbulence on the detection probability of OAM modes [6,11,12], the attenuation and crosstalk among multiple OAM channels [13] and the decay of entanglement for bipartite qubits [14,15]. These studies are all based on the Paterson model using a single phase screen [6] with the exception of the analytical study presented in [15] and the numerical study in [13] which are both based on a multiple phase screen approach.…”

Quantum Information with Structured Light

“…In a recent experiment, OAM modes were used for performing classical communication over a 3-km-long free-space optical link [76]. Additionally, the effects of turbulence on propagation of OAM modes, and methods of mitigating it has been a topic of extensive study lately [77,78,75,7,79,80,81,82]. In the next part, we outline our implementation of a high-dimensional QKD system based on using OAM modes.…”

Detecting photons with orbital angular momentum in extended astronomical objects: application to solar observations

“…Since the turbulent atmosphere and the observing instrument modify the spectrum of OAM (see Uribe-Patarroyo et al 2010a;Tyler & Boyd 2009;Yi-Xin & Ji 2009;Gbur & Tyson 2008;Paterson 2005), we face the challenge, as with any other known technique, of isolating the contribution of the actual measured object to the measured OAM spectrum. It could be the first time in which photons with non-zero OAM are detected in a natural astronomical object, and this could lead to a new kind of remote sensing in astronomy using OAM measurements.…”