Monostatic image distortion lidar technique for measuring intensity of atmospheric turbulence

摘要

A new remote sensing technique is described here for monitoring the vertical distribution of the intensity of atmospheric turbulence. The technique has several applications, including improving the performance of adaptive optics systems, prediction of laser beam degradation on long distance propagation paths, and site surveys for astronomy. The physical phenomenon underlying this method is caused by phase fluctuations, and as a result, this method does not saturate with increasing refractive index structure characteristic C$-n$/$+2$/ or with distance, and it is not affected by variations in the inner scale of turbulence. This method permits us to measure both the vertical profile of C$- n$/$+2$/ and an anizotropy coefficient of the atmospheric turbulence. Estimates of expected measured quantities are obtained, and they show that the proposed technique could be realized with existing optical systems.