Optical Vortex Beam Propagation in Turbulent Atmosphere

TL;DR

This paper investigates the propagation of optical vortex beams in turbulent atmospheres, demonstrating their advantages over Gaussian beams and experimentally generating vortex beamlets with high efficiency using an SLM.

Contribution

The study provides a theoretical analysis of vortex beamlet propagation in turbulence and experimentally demonstrates efficient vortex beamlet formation with a spatial light modulator.

Findings

Vortex beamlets exhibit superior diffraction behavior compared to Gaussian beams in turbulence.

Experimental vortex beamlet formation achieved over 90% power efficiency.

Theoretical models support the advantages of vortex beams for long-distance atmospheric propagation.

Abstract

Propagation of optical vortex beamlet (OVB) in turbulent atmospheric environment is studied theoretically by normalized models. Our simulation shows that optical vortex beamlet is superior to traditional Gaussian beam in terms of diffraction behavior of long haul propagation. Formation of vortex beam let is experimentally demonstrated by using a spatial light modulator (SLM), which achieve a power efficiency of more than 90% when the intrinsic loss in SLM is excluded.