Theory of Scintillations due to Propagation Through a Turbulent Medium.
Abstract
Experiments dealing with diffraction of laser beams in the atmosphere and of radio waves in the solar wind generated an interest in developing a theory to describe the behavior of an electromagnetic wave as it travels through a turbulent medium. A specific objective in scintillation theory is to discover the relationship between the spectrum of intensity fluctuations measured by an observer and the spectrum of refractive index fluctuations in the medium. This relationship was worked out analytically for the case of weak scattering. However, for strong scattering, the problem is more difficult and must be solved numerically. Computations are made of spectra of intensity fluctuations resulting from the propagation of a plane wave through a thin but arbitrarily strong layer of refractive index variations. The computed spectra are found to duplicate the weak scattering approximation and the high frequency approximation where these approximations are expected to be valid.
- Publication:
-
Ph.D. Thesis
- Pub Date:
- August 1975
- Bibcode:
- 1975PhDT........68M
- Keywords:
-
- Physics: Fluid and Plasma;
- Scintillation;
- Turbulence Effects;
- Wave Propagation;
- Electromagnetic Radiation;
- Lasers;
- Radio Waves;
- Solar Wind;
- Wave Diffraction;
- Communications and Radar