Abstract:
On-axis and off-axis scintillation indices of partially coherent collimated cos Gaussian and cosh Gaussian beams are evaluated on their propagation in a weakly turbulent atmosphere. In the coherent limits, our results are in quite good agreement with those for the existing Rytov scintillation index of coherent cos Gaussian and cosh Gaussian beams, especially for very small and very large sized beams and at weaker turbulence levels. The on-axis scintillation index becomes lower as the degree of source coherence decreases for both cos Gaussian and cosh Gaussian beams. Comparing to the partially coherent Gaussian beam on-axis scintillations, partially coherent cos Gaussian beam scintillations are generally lower and partially coherent cosh Gaussian beam scintillations are higher. Scintillations of Gaussian beams are very close to the scintillations of equal-power cos Gaussian and are quite similar to the scintillations of equal-power cosh Gaussian beams. Off-axis evaluations yield that the scintillations of both cos Gaussian and cosh Gaussian beams increase as the diagonal distance from the origin increases, being valid for all degrees of partial coherence