Physics-constrained GAN boosts OAM correction in ocean turbulence

Introduction This study addresses the challenge of improving wavefront correction for Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) in oceanic turbulence using a physics-constrained Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). Methods We integrated physical constraints into a deep learning framework to reconstruct degraded input images (SSIM = 0.62). The model was trained with varied loss settings, including a baseline model, spectral constraints (+Spec), and spatial constraints (+Ortho). Results The dual-constraint approach (+Ortho+Spec) reached a near-optimal SSIM of 0.98. Ablation studies revealed that while +Ortho boosted modal purity to 95.7%, the dual-constraints achieved 98.4% purity. Power spectral density analysis via KL divergence confirmed the dual-constraints' superiority (KL = 0.56) over the baseline (KL = 2.47). Discussion These results demonstrate that integrating both spatial and spectral constraints effectively optimizes reconstruction, purity, and spectral fidelity, offering a robust solution for OAM correction in underwater optical communication systems.