Influence of a thermally bloomed atmosphere on target image quality

An assessment is made of the impact of a thermally bloomed atmosphere on target image quality. The steady-state phase perturbations due to blooming and the effects of the distortion on return wave fronts are determined using a physical optics propagation code. Return target images for several realistic scenarios are reconstructed based on the incoherent point spread function for each isoplanatic region of the object (target) plane. The behavior of the image is discussed with respect to wavelength sensitivity, blur, distortion, and degradation in peak irradiance. The wave-optics approach is shown to agree with published experimental results.