[Laser] Atmosphere turbulence bubbles

[J. Forster]

Not me. There are lots of JOSA articles and books on the topic. Statistics give me a migraine.

-John


Karel Kulhavy wrote:

> > 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<
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