Mitigating atmospheric turbulence in chaos-based free-space optical links using a programmable optical processor

Atmospheric turbulence severely degrades free-space optical transmission, particularly for complex waveforms such as chaotic signals used in secure communications and sensing. Phase distortions and intensity fading can disrupt the dynamical structure of chaos, leading to loss of correlation and system performance. Here, we demonstrate an integrated multi-aperture receiver based on a programmable optical processor (POP) that enables robust chaos recovery even under strong turbulence conditions. While a conventional single-aperture receiver leads to severe signal degradation, the POP coherently recombines the distorted wavefront, restoring the temporal, spectral, and statistical properties of the chaotic signal to near turbulence-free performance. This approach provides a scalable and power-efficient solution for turbulence-resilient free-space optical systems, with applications in secure communications and LiDAR.