Experimental investigation of LG beam propagating in actual atmospheric turbulence

Abstract

The propagation properties of Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beam are investigated experimentally in an actual turbulent atmosphere, including beam propagation, phase change, and singularity perturbation. The experimental results indicate that with the increase of propagation distance the beam gradually spread, the intensity distribution of LG beam is divergent and weakened, and the position of the singularity is unstable. In particular, we compare the propagation characteristics of the Gaussian beam and LG0,1 beam through the same atmospheric turbulence conditions. The experimental results show that the propagation stability of the LG beam is found to be better than that of the Gaussian beam.

Keywords

• Laguerre-gaussian beam (LG)
• Atmospheric turbulence
• Orbital angular momentum (OAM)
• Free-space optical communication (FSO)