Influence of coincidence detection through free-space atmospheric turbulence using partial spatial coherence

TL;DR

This paper investigates how atmospheric turbulence affects quantum photon pair detection, demonstrating that partially spatially coherent pumps improve robustness in free-space quantum communication.

Contribution

It provides both theoretical and experimental insights into the impact of atmospheric turbulence on coincidence detection, highlighting the benefits of partial spatial coherence.

Findings

Partially spatially coherent pumps enhance robustness against turbulence.

Atmospheric turbulence modeled with Kolmogorov theory affects photon detection.

Partially coherent beams outperform fully coherent ones under turbulence.

Abstract

The development of a quantum network relies on the advances of hybrid systems which includes ground to ground communication. However, the atmospheric turbulence of the environment poses a severe challenge to the optical quantum link. In this paper, we outline a theoretical and experimental investigation of the influence of atmospheric turbulence on the coincidence detection of the entangled photon pairs using a fully and partially spatially coherent pump beam. A spatial light modulator is encoded with Kolmogorov model to mimic the atmospheric turbulence strength. The results show that the photon pairs generated using a partially spatially coherent pump are more robust towards varying atmospheric turbulence strengths than the photon pairs produced by a fully spatially coherent pump beam.