Sci Rep. 2026 May 27. doi: 10.1038/s41598-026-46257-8. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
Engineering optical resilience against atmospheric turbulence is essential for robust free-space photonic technologies. Here, we demonstrate that dual partially coherent Bessel-Vortex beams-with engineered topological charge pairing-exhibit unprecedented control over turbulence-induced scintillation beyond what is achievable with single beams or partial coherence alone. Using a spatial light modulator, we generate single and dual partially coherent Bessel-Vortex beams and propagate them through a laboratory turbulence chamber calibrated to Kolmogorov statistics ([Formula: see text]) over a 0.15 m path, corresponding to a 1 km atmospheric propagation with equivalent turbulence strength [Formula: see text]. A key technical innovation of this work is the simultaneous encoding of both the Bessel-Vortex phase profile and the Kolmogorov-distributed random phase onto a single hologram displayed on the SLM-enabling real-time generation of partially coherent structured beams without additional optical components. We find that dual-beam configurations with co-signed topological charges show monotonically increasing resilience with charge difference, whereas counter-signed pairs display a pronounced non-monotonic response with minimal resistance at Δm = 8. Most strikingly, beams with equal-magnitude opposite charges (|m₁| = |m₂|) exhibit monotonic degradation in resilience up to order 14-a behavior absent in single-vortex systems. These results establish dual topological charge pairing as a previously unexplored design parameter for turbulence-resilient optical systems, with direct implications for free-space optical communication, quantum information transfer, and high-precision optical manipulation.
PMID:42204203 | DOI:10.1038/s41598-026-46257-8
