Turbulence-resilient detection of the rotational Doppler effect with cylindrical vector beams
Jingyi Wang, Xingyu Su, Tong Liu, Hong Ling, Haoxu Guo, Xiaodong Qiu, Yuan Ren, Lixiang Chen
Abstract
Recent years have witnessed a growing research interest in the rotational Doppler effect associated with orbital angular momentum of light, emerging as a powerful tool to detect rotating bodies in remote sensing. However, this method, when exposed to the turbulence in a realistic environment, has some severe limitations, leading to the unrecognizable rotational Doppler signals overwhelmed in background noise. Here we put forward a concise yet efficient method that enables the turbulence-resilient detection of the rotational Doppler effect with cylindrical vector beams. Specifically, by adopting the polarization-encoded dual-channel detection system, the low-frequency noises caused by turbulence can be individually extracted and subtracted, and thus mitigate the effect of turbulence. We demonstrate our scheme by conducting proof-of-principle experiments, whose results manifest the feasibility of a practical sensor to detect the rotating bodies in non-laboratory conditions.