Einstein Beams for Free-space Optical Communications

The ability to transfer information at high speeds across free-space is important to the modern world. We present a proof of concept method, using non-diffracting self-healing Einstein Beams, inspired by gravitational lensing, to encode information for free-space communication. We do this by adding different topological charges of OAM to the beam to create unbounded orthogonal states. We can improve the channel capacity by multiplexing between each of these states. Then we add a periodic time-dependent rotation to allow for computionally efficient decoding by the receiver. Aditionally, the self-healing properties make these beams a good candidate for high-bandwidth optical communications. If there is an obstructing object is between the source and receiver the beam will reform with propagation and there will be less information loss with this method.