Irradiance scintillation on laser beam propagation in the boundary-layer turbulent atmosphere

Xiwen Qiang; Haomiao Ma

doi:10.1117/12.768069

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6 February 2008 Irradiance scintillation on laser beam propagation in the boundary-layer turbulent atmosphere

Xiwen Qiang, Haomiao Ma

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Proceedings Volume 6823, High-Power Lasers and Applications IV; 68231G (2008) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.768069
Event: Photonics Asia 2007, 2007, Beijing, China

Abstract

Optical turbulence effects, such as irradiance scintillation, fluctuation of arrival angle, beam wander, and beam spreading, etc., degrade the beam quality as a laser beam propagates in the turbulent atmosphere. Of these effects, the scintillation is a dominant effect in many applied fields such as high-data-rate laser atmospheric communication, astronomical adaptive optics imaging, and other laser engineering. The scintillated irradiance depends on integral of optical turbulence along the propagation path and it induces a perturbation on the amplitude of the electro-magnetic field. As the integral is smaller, the Rytov weak fluctuation theory can solve the problem successfully. However, with an increase in the strength of the atmosphere turbulence or the path length, multiple scattering events must occur and result in saturation. The irradiance scintillation of laser beam propagation in a slant-path in the boundary-layer is investigated for the cases of weaker to moderate-to-stronger turbulence, various path-length and elevation angles. The dependence of scintillation on turbulence strength, path-length, and elevation angle is presented and the results are compared with the Rytov theory.

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Xiwen Qiang and Haomiao Ma "Irradiance scintillation on laser beam propagation in the boundary-layer turbulent atmosphere", Proc. SPIE 6823, High-Power Lasers and Applications IV, 68231G (6 February 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.768069

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