Scintillation of a Ground-to-Space Laser Illuminator

Abstract

The problem of scintillation of a laser beam because of atmospheric turbulence, which has previously-been studied for a horizontal propagation path, is studied in this paper for a path from a ground-based transmitter to a measurement point in space. The results are presented in terms of the log-amplitude variance C_l(0), from which the intensity variance can be computed. The log-amplitude variance is found to be separable into a strength factor C_l^s(0) associated with the use of a zero-diameter source, and an aperture factor which measures the reduction of C_l(0) caused by use of a large-aperture transmitter. Values of the aperture factor are calculated.