Experimental orbital angular momentum based quantum key distribution through turbulence

TL;DR

This paper experimentally investigates how atmospheric turbulence affects the secret key rate in orbital angular momentum-based quantum key distribution, revealing that key rate decay correlates with entanglement loss.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental analysis of turbulence effects on OAM-based QKD protocols, comparing different protocols and their robustness.

Findings

Secret key rate decays with turbulence strength

Key rate decay aligns with entanglement decay

Different protocols exhibit similar robustness levels

Abstract

Using an experimental setup that simulates a turbulent atmosphere, we study the secret key rate for quantum key distribution protocols in orbital angular momentum based free space quantum communication. The quantum key distribution protocols under consideration include the Ekert 91 protocol for different choices of mutually unbiased bases and the six-state protocol. We find that the secret key rate of these protocols decay to zero roughly at the same scale where the entanglement of formation decays to zero.