Scintillation Behavior of Laguerre Gaussian Beams in Strong Turbulence

Abstract

In strong atmospheric turbulence, the asymptotic on-axis scintillation behaviors of Laguerre Gaussian (LG) beams are examined. To arrive at the strong-turbulence solution, we utilize the existing filtering approach for weak-turbulence solutions and our recently reported weak-turbulence scintillation index formula for LG beams. In the limiting case, our solution correctly predicts the asymptotic strong-turbulence behavior of Gaussian beam wave scintillation. Investigation of the scintillations versus the propagation distance, source size, wavelength and refractive index structure parameter lead to the conclusion that the LG beams with higher order radial modes can provide less scintillation. The results are applicable to long-haul atmospheric optical communication links.