[Laser] Atmosphere turbulence bubbles

[Karel Kulhavy]

> My understanding is that what really matters is the size of the beam compared to the size
> of the turbulence patch. There are two cases:
> 
> The beam is small compared to the patch...  in this case the patch acts as a wedge prism
> and the beam is simply deflected. If you were looking at a star or planet through a
> telescope under these conditions, it would appear to remain as a sharp point, but jump
> around.
> 
> The beam is large compared to the patch... in this case the beam quality is severely
> degraded. In this case, a star would appear to defocus or blur.
> 
> In most practical situations, you will have a mix of the above conditions.
> 
> Note that if the patches were uniform in size throughout the path length, their effect
> would be different nearby compared to far away because the beam diverges.
> 
> As in telescope site selection, it may be worth avoiding places and times when the
> atmosphere is very turbulent due to changing thermal gradients or weather fronts.

Does anyone know some statistical properties of this wiggling refraction?

CL<