Use of Optical Superbeams in Atmospheric Turbulence Applications

1 online resource (142 pages) : PDF

2011

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

The use of nonconventional beam classes in turbulence applications is investigated. Through the study on pseudo-Bessel correlated beam propagation in the atmosphere, it is shown that scintillation reduction by a partially coherent beam can be obtained by a corresponding incoherent beam array with finite number of beamlets. General guidelines for scintillation reduction by incoherent beam arrays are developed; these guidelines include reducing correlation of beamlet atmospheric propagation, maximizing the total intensity arriving at the detector, and selecting beamlets with small scintillation. With these goals in mind, Airy beams, a novel beam class, are applied to generate an incoherent beam array whose scintillations are significantly reduced. By the analogy with two-mode partially coherent beams, nonuniformly polarized beams are demonstrated to be of small scintillation. This suggests a relatively easy and inexpensive method to reduce the scintillation of a coherent optical beam. Finally a method to measure atmospheric turbulence strength by using vortex beams is proposed and its feasibility is theoretically demonstrated.

doctoral dissertations

Optics

Ph.D.

Optical Science and Engineering

Gbur, Gregory

Cai, Wei
Fiddy, Michael
Tyson, Robert
Ramaprabhu, Praveen

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2011.

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Gu_uncc_0694D_10249

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13093/etd:1569