Fig. 8. Leveraging vortex beam propagation characteristics for enhanced environmental monitoring.

As vortex beams propagate through the atmosphere, turbulence disrupts their intensity distribution and modifies their spiral phase structure, leading to the formation of speckle patterns and the dispersion of the OAM spectrum. Analyzing these effects provides valuable insights into atmospheric properties, aiding in the retrieval of key environmental parameters. Moreover, combining two-dimensional speckle patterns with one-dimensional OAM spectrum data enables deep learning models to accurately classify and reconstruct turbulent atmospheric conditions