Entanglement transmission through dense scattering medium

Abstract

Scattering effects are ubiquitous in practical wireless optical links. Here a transmission model with complete consideration of scattered light and beam wandering effects for underwater link is developed, with the aim to completely characterize the received quantum state of light through dense scattering medium. Based on this model, we show the influence of scattered photons on the improvement of the entanglement after transmission through turbid water may vary for different copropagation scenarios, i.e., the contribution of scattered light on entanglement transmission may be turned from positive to negative, with increase of the strength of underwater beam wandering. And the attenuation coefficient and aperture size are found to be the dominant factors affecting the entanglement through underwater link. While for the counterpropagation scenario, the scattered photons will severely deteriorate the entanglement transmission especially for the high-loss scattering links. These findings may shed light on quantum entanglement transmission and help to develop its applications through dense scattering medium.