Wander of a Gaussian-Beam Wave Propagated Through a Non-Kolmogorov Turbulent Atmosphere

Abstract

Both increasing experimental evidence and some results of theoretical investigation have shown that there exist two kinds of turbulence in the aerosphere, Kolmogorov and non-Kolmogorov turbulence. Thus, it is necessary to improve the theory of optical wave propagation through atmospheric turbulence, namely, study the laser-beam propagation in non-Kolmogorov turbulence, before analyzing the joint influence of the Kolmogorov turbulence and non-Kolmogorov one on satellite laser communication. The beam wander will lead to the performance degradation of satellite laser communication systems and exert an influence on the achievement and stability of its links. In this paper, we consider a theoretical power spectrum of refractive-index fluctuations with a generalized power law in order to derive the variance of Gaussian-beam wave wander in weak turbulence for a horizonal path and analyze the influence of spectral power-law variations on the beam wander. We show that the expression for the beam-wander variance is of concise closed form and independent of the optical wavelength.