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Quantum 2.0 Conference and Exhibition

Atmospheric Turbulence Simulator to Study Photon Pair Indistinguishability in Free-Space Optical Networks

Keith A. Wyman, Anil K. Patnaik

Published Jan 1, 2023• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

To study the effects of atmospheric turbulence on the indistinguishability of photons propagating from a ground station to a satellite, we built and characterized an atmospheric turbulence simulator (ATS) in a laboratory setting.
DOI
10.1364/quantum.2023.qw2a.3

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The Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) is building a quantum optics and quantum information laboratory to study single photon phenomena and its applications. We propose an experiment to characterize the effects of atmospheric turbulence on single photons and entangled pair of photons as a function of statistical quantities that define a turbulent atmosphere (such as the Fried parameter, Greenwood frequency, Rytov variance, ect).This presentation details the initial experiment studying single photon propagation using an atmospheric turbulence simulator that statistically represents ground-to-space quantum communications.
To study long-distance free-space quantum communication links, the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) simulated, designed, built, and characterized an atmospheric turbulence simulator (ATS) with the Fried parameter ranging from 0≤ D⁄r_0 <18.2. The ATS was integrated with a non-turbulent path to conduct quantum interferometric experiments such as the heralded single photon g^2 (τ), and the two-photon Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) measurement. We observed that g^2 (0) increased to 1 and that the visibility of the HOM dip significantly decreased in moderate turbulence . Additionally, we tested the reconstruction of polarized-entangled photonic states in various turbulence regimes, and as expected, turbulence weakly affected the reconstruction of the polarization states. This presentation details the experimental setup, results, and analysis of those experiments.
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Long-range quantum communication requires sending qubits, usually photonic cubits, over long distances through free space. Photons propagating through free space encounter optical turbulence, causing scattering and entanglement degradation. In recent decades, adaptive optics has been used to correct imaging errors introduced by turbulence. An atmospheric turbulence simulator has been constructed to measure the effect of optical turbulence on single photon propagation, and an adaptive optics system has been incorporated. The turbulence simulator uses two rotating phase plates to emulate the effects of random dispersive media and two afocal systems to scale long propagation distances down to lengths realizable in a laboratory. The adaptive optics system consists of a Shack-Hartman wavefront sensor used to measure wavefront error, and a deformable mirror used to correct this error. The use of adaptive optics allows us to correct wavefront errors introduced by turbulence. Adding an adaptive optics system into this simulator facilitates more robust characterization of the strength of the simulated turbulence, as well as correction of some of the negative effects the turbulence introduces. This presentation will discuss the effects of turbulence on single photon propagation when an adaptive optics system is used and how these results compare to previously measurements taken without the use of adaptive optics, allowing us to quantify the improvement adaptive optics introduces.
Satellite FSO/QKD systems employ free-space optical links between satellites and ground stations to achieve long-distance quantum key distribution. However, these systems face challenges from atmospheric turbulence. This paper introduces a theoretical framework to evaluate the influence of phase fluctuations caused by atmospheric turbulence on the system performance. Mathematical expressions for key performance metrics are derived and validated through Monte- Carlo simulations. Using results from the framework, we provide a recommended system setup to fulfil the QKD performance requirements under different atmospheric turbulence conditions.