Photonic orbital angular momentum in turbulence: vortex splitting and adaptive optics

Recent works revealed that transmission of light beams carrying orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) through turbulence causes the optical vortex defining these beams to split into multiple vortices with unit topological charge. Here, we consider the numerical propagation of orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) modes through a horizontal atmospheric channel. By analysing the beam's phase front after transmission through turbulence, we confirm the occurence of vortex splitting, but we also witness the emergence of vortex-antivortex pairs. Moreover, by performing performing a decomposition of the transmitted wave into OAM modes, we show that while adaptive optics cannot cancel vortex splitting, it still is pretty efficient in diminishing the turbulence-induced crosstalk between different OAM modes.