Amplified Entanglement Assisted Communication Outperforming Classical Laser Communication in Strong Atmospheric Turbulence Regime

Contrary to the common belief that EDFA can destroy the entanglement, we demonstrate experimentally that in entanglement assisted communication systems dominated by attenuation effects rather than noise, the signal photons can be amplified by the EDFA without destroying the entanglement. We perform experiments over terrestrial free-space optical testbed developed at the University of Arizona, composed of the FSO link that is 1.5 km in length. We demonstrate that the amplified entanglement assisted communication system at 10 Gb / s, operated in strong turbulence regime, significantly outperforms the corresponding classical communication system operated in medium turbulence regime, clearly representing the quantum advantage. To reduce the system cost, the entanglement generation source is implemented by employing only the telecom C-band based devices.