Simultaneous Measurements of Turbulence Level and Inner Scale Using Laser Scintillation

Laser propagation through the atmosphere produces random scintillation patterns. The statistics of these intensity fluctuations is determined by the refractive index spectrum of the atmosphere Φ n ( q → ) where q → denotes spatial wavenumber. Tatarskii proposed the following model for the turbulence spectrum1 where C n 2 is a measure of the level of turbulence and l0 is proportional to the inner scale λ0(λ0=2.95l0). The inner scale is defined as the intercept of the two power law regions of the three dimensional structure function of refractive index fluctuations.