Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Laser Beam Propagation Over Long Distances In Turbulent Media, Justyna O. Sotiris

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

The propagation of lasers through different media is a broad topic of study and falls under the larger topic of wave propagation. The focus of this thesis is the development and analysis of a numerical computational model of laser beam propagation through a turbulent atmosphere over a long distance. When a beam propagates through a turbulent atmosphere over a distance exceeding several kilometers it is a strong fluctuation propagation. There exist fewer robust methods to demonstrate how strong fluctuations affect the beam. Beam propagation can be described by the Linear Schr\"{o}dinger Equation (LSE). The fluctuations in the refractive index are …