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

Quantum Physics 2012-08-16 v2 Optics

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.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1204.5781,
  title  = {Influence of Atmospheric Turbulence on Optical Communications using Orbital Angular Momentum for Encoding},
  author = {Mehul Malik and Malcolm O'Sullivan and Brandon Rodenburg and Mohammad Mirhosseini and Jonathan Leach and Martin P. J. Lavery and Miles J. Padgett and Robert W. Boyd},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1204.5781},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

6 pages, 5 figures