Photonic orbital angular momentum in turbulence: vortex splitting and adaptive optics

Giacomo Sorelli (1, 2, 3) , Vyaceslav N Shatokhin (4) , Andreas Buchleitner (4)

1 LKB (Jussieu) - Laboratoire Kastler Brossel
2 DEMR, ONERA, Université Paris Saclay [Palaiseau]
3 QI - Information Quantique [LIP6]
4 Physikalisches Institut [Freiburg]

Recent works revealed that transmission of light beams carrying orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) through turbulence causes the optical vortex defining these beams to split into multiple vortices with unit topological charge. Here, we consider the numerical propagation of orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) modes through a horizontal atmospheric channel. By analysing the beam's phase front after transmission through turbulence, we confirm the occurence of vortex splitting, but we also witness the emergence of vortex-antivortex pairs. Moreover, by performing performing a decomposition of the transmitted wave into OAM modes, we show that while adaptive optics cannot cancel vortex splitting, it still is pretty efficient in diminishing the turbulence-induced crosstalk between different OAM modes.

Mots clés: orbital angular momentum; vortex splitting; adaptive optics

Domaines: Physique [physics]

Giacomo Sorelli, Vyaceslav N Shatokhin, Andreas Buchleitner. Photonic orbital angular momentum in turbulence: vortex splitting and adaptive optics. SPIE Remote Sensing, Sep 2020, Online Only, France. pp.10, ⟨10.1117/12.2573474⟩. ⟨hal-03267308⟩