Beam-holding property analysis of the perfect optical vortex beam transmitting in atmospheric turbulence

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate the beam-holding property of the perfect optical vortex (POV) beam transmitting in atmospheric turbulence. In this paper, POV beams of different modes with the same ring radius and beam waist are generated by loading a special phase mask into a spatial light modulator (SLM), and then these beams are transmitted through atmospheric turbulence. Moreover, a beam radius detection algorithm based on Matlab is adopted to evaluate beam distortion during atmospheric turbulence transmission. Based on these efforts, we also show bit error rates (BER) performance of POV channels carrying the quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) signals. Simulation and experimental results show that the turbulent distortion effect on each mode of the POV beams is related to its beam ring radius and beam waist. And with the specific beam pattern determined by radius and waist, different modes POV beams can display the same turbulent distortion effect under the different transmission environment. This work confirms a new feature of the POV beam and provides new insights into orbital angular momentum (OAM) turbulence compensation scheme.