The effect of turbulence on entanglement-based free-space quantum key distribution with photonic orbital angular momentum
Sandeep K. Goyal, Alpha Hamadou Ibrahim, Filippus Stefanus Roux, Thomas R. Konrad, Andrew Forbes · Journal of Optics · 2016
Abstract Using an experimental setup that simulates a turbulent atmosphere, we study the secret key rate for quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols in orbital angular momentum based free space quantum communication. The QKD protocols under consideration include the Ekert 91 protocol for different choices of mutually unbiased bases and the six-state protocol. We find that the secret key rate of these protocols decay to zero, roughly at the same scale where the entanglement of formation decays to zero.