Influence of Atmospheric Turbulence on Optical Communications using Orbital Angular Momentum for Encoding

Abstract

We describe an experimental implementation of a free-space 11-dimensional communication system using orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes. This system has a maximum measured OAM channel capacity of 2.12 bits/photon. The effects of Kolmogorov thin-phase turbulence on the OAM channel capacity are quantified. We find that increasing the turbulence leads to a degradation of the channel capacity. We are able to mitigate the effects of turbulence by increasing the spacing between detected OAM modes. This study has implications for high-dimensional quantum key distribution (QKD) systems. We describe the sort of QKD system that could be built using our current technology.

6 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Free-Space distribution of entanglement and single photons over 144 km
• Long-distance quantum key distribution in optical fiber
• Two-photon wave mechanics
• Infinitesimal propagation equation for decoherence of an OAM entangled biphoton in atmospheric turbulence

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Influence of atmospheric turbulence on states of light carrying orbital angular momentum
• Characterization of high-dimensional entangled systems via mutually unbiased measurements
• Near-Perfect Sorting of Orbital Angular Momentum and Angular Position States of Light
• Entangled Singularity patterns of Photons in Ince-Gauss modes
• Quantum-secured imaging
• Measurement of the Orbital Angular Momentum Spectrum of Partially Coherent Fields using Double Angular Slit Interference