Adaptive compensation for atmospheric turbulence effects on optical propagation

Optical wavefronts propagated in atmospheric turbulence suffer significant degradation manifested as beam spread, beam wander, and scintillation. The state of progress of this field of research is reviewed as well as recent efforts to overcome the limiting effects of refractive turbulence. Adaptive optical systems are being developed to sense the phase distortion present on propagated beams and to compensate for these aberrations in real time. Equations describing the magnitude of the turbulence effect and also describing the degree to which compensation may be achieved are given. Supporting data are presented as well.