A New Method of Generating Atmospheric Turbulence with a Liquid Crystal Spatial Light Modulator

When the light begins to propagate through Earth’s atmosphere, the varying index of refraction will alter the optical path, as shown in Fig. 2. The Earth’s atmosphere can be described as a locally homogeneous medium in which its properties vary with respect to temperature, pressure, wind velocities, humidity and many other factors. Also, the Earth’s atmosphere temporally changes in a quasi-random fashion. All of these processes are usually simply refered to as ``atmospheric turbulence’’. The Kolmogorov model of energy distribution in a turbulent medium is a useful statistical model to describe the fluctuation in refractive index due to mostly the humidity and pressure changes. This model was first O pe n A cc es s D at ab as e w w w .in te ch w eb .o rg