<title>A user-friendly software package for predicting atmospheric turbulence effects on laser beam propagation</title>

Abstract

A new user-friendly software product called the Atmospheric Laser Turbulence Model (ALTM) has been developed at the University of Central Florida and is distributed through Ontar Corporation (www.ontar.com) to provide Gaussian-beam wave propagation models for calculating various beam characteristics in the presence of atmospheric turbulence. The calculations are valid for any horizontal path in which the atmospheric index of refraction structure parameter Cn2 can be taken as a constant. Two choices of atmospheric model are available to the user-the Kolmogorov Spectrum, which is based on the atmospheric structure parameter or the more accurate Modified Atmospheric Spectrum, which exhibits the "bump" at high wave numbers and is based on the atmospheric structure parameter and the turbulence inner scale and outer scale. The beam-wave models are valid for optical frequencies ranging from the visible to the far-IR portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. This paper provides an overview of the ALTM software package including current limitations of and future enhancements to the model.