Ince-Gauss Photons in Turbulent Atmosphere: Effect of quantum numbers on beam resilience

Abstract

In this work, we present an extensive analysis on the nature and performance of Ince-Gauss beams, elliptical solutions of the paraxial wave equation that have orbital angular momentum, as information carriers in turbulent atmosphere. We perform numerical simulations of the propagation of these beams, and focus on the effects that the order, degree and ellipticity parameters have on the robustness of the beams. We find that the choice of basis in which a mode is constructed does not greatly influence the mode performance and it is instead strongly affected by the combination of order and degree values.