Orbital angular momentum entanglement in turbulence

TL;DR

This paper investigates how turbulence affects the decay of orbital angular momentum entanglement between photons, using numerical simulations and experiments based on Kolmogorov turbulence theory, revealing that higher OAM values are more robust.

Contribution

It provides the first combined numerical and experimental analysis of OAM entanglement decay in turbulence, including an empirical formula for entanglement decay distance.

Findings

Higher OAM values show increased robustness in turbulence.

Derived empirical formula for entanglement decay distance.

Compared single and dual photon turbulence scenarios.

Abstract

The turbulence induced decay of orbital angular momentum (OAM) entanglement between two photons is investigated numerically and experimentally. To compare our results with previous work, we simulate the turbulent atmosphere with a single phase screen based on the Kolmogorov theory of turbulence. We consider two different scenarios: in the first only one of the two photons propagates through turbulence, and in the second both photons propagate through uncorrelated turbulence. Comparing the entanglement evolution for different OAM values, we found the entanglement to be more robust in turbulence for higher OAM values. We derive an empirical formula for the distance scale at which entanglement decays in term of the scale parameters and the OAM value.