Emulation of optical effects of atmospheric turbulence using two liquid-crystal spatial light modulators

Abstract

Phase-only liquid-crystal spatial light modulators (SLMs) provide an excellent means of producing electrically controllable, dynamic, and repeatable aberrations. Emulating the aberrating effects of atmospheric turbulence is the application studied here. This paper implements a new method for designing a SLM-based turbulent path in the laboratory. The turbulent path was constructed with well-calibrated SLMs and was subsequently used to implement an appropriately scaled ground-to-air laser engagement. After propagation through the turbulent path, the irradiance and phase properties of the aberrated light were measured with an image sensor and a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor, respectively. The resulting wave structure functions and log-amplitude probability densities showed excellent agreement with theoretical expectations and the results of wave-optics simulations.