Scintillations of partially coherent Laguerre Gaussian beams

Abstract

Scintillations of Laguerre–Gaussian (LG) beams for weak atmospheric turbulence conditions are derived for on-axis receiver positions by using Huygens–Fresnel (HF) method in semi-analytic fashion. Numerical evaluations indicate that at the fully coherent limit, higher values of radial mode numbers will give rise to more scintillations, at medium and low partial coherence levels, particularly at longer propagation distances, scintillations will fall against rises in radial mode numbers. At small source sizes, the scintillations of LG beams having full coherence will initially rise, reaching saturation at large source sizes. For LG beams with low partial coherence levels, a steady fall toward the larger source sizes is observed. Partially coherent beams of medium levels generally exhibit a rising trend toward the large source sizes, also changing the respective positions of the related curves. Beams of low coherence levels will be less affected by the variations in the refractive index structure constant.