Simulator for general-type beam propagation in turbulent atmosphere

Abstract

A simulator is designed in MATLAB code which gives the propagation characteristics of a general-type beam in turbulent atmosphere. When the required source and medium parameters are entered, the simulator yields the average intensity profile along the propagation axis in a video format. In our simulator, the user can choose the option of a "user defined beam" in which the source and medium parameters are selected as requested by the user by entering numerical values in the relevant menu boxes. Alternatively, the user can proceed with the option of "pre-defined beam" in which the average intensity profiles of beams such as annular, cos-Gaussian, sine-Gaussian, cosh-Gaussian, sinh-Gaussian, their higher-order counterparts and flat-topped can be observed as they propagate in a turbulent atmosphere. Some samples of the simulator output are presented. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America