Liquid mercury optical scintillator system for simulating optical atmospheric turbulence effects

摘要

A liquid mercury optical scintillator for simulating atmospheric laser scintillation effects is described which comprises a partially bounded mercury pool, a transducer operatively connected to the the pool for coupling vibrational energy to the surface of the pool, and a detector for measuring spatial irradiance variations in a laser beam reflected from the vibrating mercury surface which variations correspond to probability distributions matching atmospheric In-normal statistics.