Twisted photons carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) are competent candidates for future interstellar communications. However, the gravitational fluctuations are ubiquitous in spacetime. Thus a fundamental question arises naturally as to how the gravitational fluctuations affect the coherence and the degree of high-dimensional OAM entanglement when twisted photons travel across the textures of curved spacetime. Here, we consider the covariant scalar Helmholtz equations and the Minkowski metric with fluctuations of Gaussian distribution and formulate analytically the equations describing the motion for twisted light in the Laguerre-Gaussian mode space. It is seen that the OAM cannot remain conserved in the presence of gravitational fluctuations. Furthermore, two-photon density matrices are derived for interstellar OAM quantum entanglement distribution, and the degree of entanglement degradation is characterized by purity and negativity. It is revealed that the higher-dimensional OAM entanglement is more susceptible to spacetime fluctuations. We believe that our findings will be of fundamental importance for the future interstellar quantum communications with twisted photons.

• Received 3 March 2022
• Accepted 7 August 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.106.045023