Atmospheric turbulence and orbital angular momentum of single photons for optical communication

Phys Rev Lett. 2005 Apr 22;94(15):153901. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.153901. Epub 2005 Apr 18.

Abstract

The effects of propagation through random aberrations on coherence for single-photon communication systems based on orbital angular momentum states are quantified. A rotational coherence function is derived which leads to scattering equations for azimuthal modes of different orbital angular momentum states. The effect on a single-photon communication system is quantified using the channel capacity. The work shows that the decoherence effect of atmospheric turbulence on such systems is important even for weak turbulence.