<title>Optical properties of atmospheric turbulence and their effects on light propagation (Invited Paper)</title>

Abstract

Some of our experimental and theoretical results on optical properties of atmospheric turbulence and light propagation through atmosphere are introduced as follows. 1) A mixed model for the scaling property of high-order structure functions of temperature is proposed to study the turbulence intermittency effect in numerical simulation of light propagation through turbulence. 2) The difference of refractive index structure constant C²_n of atmosphere and light beam wander measured in horizontal and vertical directions suggest that the atmospheric turbulence is not isotopc in many cases. 3) The fluctuation of the scaling exponent of optical turbulence spectrum and light intensity fluctuation spectrum indicate taht the atmospheric turbulence is not a Kolmogorov one in many cases. 4) A general description of turbulence strength is proposed using the variance of the refractive index σ²_n, the outer scale L₀, the scaling power γ and the inner scale l₀. 5) Characteristics of the power spectrum of laser scintillation in atmosphere depend on the laesr beam property, diameter of the receiving aperture, turbulence spectrum in the dissipation range. 6) The intermittency of ligh scintillation is rather stable at different scintillation index for light propagation through turbulence over both land and sea surfaces. 7) The number density of phaser branch points of light wave field in turbulence generally increases with turbulence strength but present large diversity.