Abstract:
Minimization effects on the on-axis scintillation index of cos Gaussian (cG) and cosh Gaussian (chG) beams are studied in strong turbulence. In our formulation, the unified solution of the Rytov method, which imposes spatial filtering to extend the solution to the strong turbulence regime, is applied. Our solution correctly reduces to the weak turbulence sinusoidal beam scintillations and the strong turbulence Gaussian beam scintillations. The conditions to minimize the scintillations are found to be focused chG beams. Small scale scintillations mainly determine the overall scintillations of cG and chG beams in strong turbulence. In strong turbulence, increase in the source size decreases the scintillations of collimated cG beams but does not change the scintillations of focused cG beams. Collimated cG beams having larger displacement parameters and large focal lengths show smaller scintillations in the strong regime. Change in the displacement parameters for collimated and focused chG beams and the focal length of focused chG beams do not considerably vary their scintillations in strong turbulence