Theoretical Study of the Turbulence Induced Scintillation of a Dirty Laser Beam.

: This work is concerned with predicting the temporal scintillation spectrum of a laser beam which has propagated through the turbulent atmosphere. Use is made of the Extended Huygens-Fresnel principle in deriving a very general but compact mathematical expression for the temporal scintillation spectrum of an unspecified source field with an arbitrary shaped extended receiver aperture. This formula, which is restricted to the weak turbulence regime, is then applied to the analysis of several situations of contemporary interest. Specifically, the analysis is directed toward the description of the effects of such a laser beam which is blemished in a deterministic sense. Spectra obtained under these conditions are shown to display increased sensitivity to the path distribution of the turbulence strength.