Average intensity of tilted and off-axis Gaussian Schell-model beams propagating through a cat-eye optical lens in atmospheric turbulence

Abstract

The influences of atmospheric turbulence and the beam coherence on the average intensity of tilted and off-axis laser beams propagating through a cat-eye optical lens in the turbulence are studied. It is shown that the oscillatory behavior and the skewness of average intensity may appear because there exist apertures and active detection laser beams are tilted or off-axis. The skewness is independent of turbulence, but the oscillatory behavior disappears due to turbulence. For a small positive defocus of a cat-eye optical lens, the on-axis average intensity reaches its maximum. The a positive defocus value becomes small as the focal length of the cat-eye optical lens decreases, but it is independent of atmospheric turbulence and the coherence of active detection laser beams. And the average intensity becomes an off-Gaussian-like profile when the propagation distance is large enough in turbulence. However, less beam spreading may occur with increasing propagation distance for active detection laser beams with less coherence, which is quite different from the behavior of laser beams propagating in free space. The better the coherence of active detection laser beams is, the more the average intensity is affected by the turbulence, but the difference is small. The results obtained in this paper are very useful for the applications is active laser detection.