Propagation of partially coherent BesselGaussianbeams in turbulent atmosphere

Baosuan Chen, Ziyang Chen, Jixiong Pu , Department of Electronic Science and Technology, Huaqiao University, Quanzhou, Fujian 362021, China Received 1 October 2007. Revised 24 November 2007. Accepted 29 November 2007. Available online 14 January 2008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.optlastec.2007.11.011, How to Cite or Link Using DOI Cited by in Scopus (15) Permissions & Reprints

Abstract
The characteristics of partially coherent Bessel-Gaussianbeams propagating in turbulent atmosphere are investigated. Based on the extended HuygensFresnel principle, the influence of topological charges and coherence of the source on the intensity and the degree of coherence in the received plane are considered. The influence of atmospheric turbulence on beam profile and coherence in the received plane is also analyzed. It is found that a Bessel-Gaussian shaped intensity distribution will eventually transform into a Gaussian distribution after propagating in turbulent atmosphere. Meanwhile, topological charges, coherence of the source and atmospheric turbulence will also influence the propagation characterizations of the beams.

PACS

42.25.Ja; 42.25.Kb; 43.50.Ar

Keywords

Partially coherent; Bessel-Gaussianbeams; Turbulent atmosphere

1. Introduction
It is well known that the propagation of laser beams through a turbulent atmosphere has many applications in optical communication [1]. Therefore, there has been much research on the propagation of different kinds of laser beams, such as flat-topped beams, in a turbulent atmosphere [2], [3] and [4]. In 1990, Wu and Boradman found theoretically that a partially coherent beam is less influenced by a turbulent atmosphere than is a completely coherent beam[5] and [6]. In 2002, Gbur and Wolf derived the conditions in which partially coherent beams are less influenced by the turbulent medium [7], which was later experimentally demonstrated by Dogariu and Amarande in 2003 [8]. Since then, the characterization of partially coherent light propagating through turbulent atmosphere has been extensively studied [9], [10] and [11]. For example, Gbur and Korotkova used an angular spectrum representation to describe the statistical properties of arbitrary coherent beams propagating through atmospheric turbulence [12]. Recently, Besselbeams have attracted the attention of researchers for their non-diffracting property [13], [14] and [15]. However, they contain an infinite amount of energy and, therefore, are not physically realizable. A Gaussian exponential is introduced here as a windowing function to confine their energy to construct a so-called Bessel-Gaussianbeam[16], [17], [18] and [19]. More recently, some researchers have conducted a study on the propagation of Jn-type BesselGaussianbeams in misaligned ABCD optical systems [20]. However, the above-quoted works are either limited to the propagation of Bessel-Gaussianbeams in free space, i.e., propagation without atmospheric turbulence, or limited to the propagation of completely coherent Bessel-Gaussianbeams. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the propagation properties of partially coherent Bessel-Gaussianbeams traveling in a turbulent atmosphere. Based on the extended HuygensFresnel principle, the received plane intensity is formulated and solved down to a double integral stage. Then, based on the derived expression, the intensity distribution and spectral degree of coherence are investigated in great detail. Finally, some numerical examples are presented to illustrate the influence of atmospheric turbulence and the source beam parameters on the propagation characteristics of partially coherent beams.

2. Formulation
Let us first consider a partially coherent beam propagating along the z-axis in a turbulent atmosphere. The field of the completely coherent beam can be expressed as (1)

where n denotes the topological charge, Jn is the Bessel function, and w0 are the width parameters and is the angular frequency.

Furthermore, we define the correlation function as [21] (2)

Therefore, the cross-spectral density of a partially coherent Bessel-Gaussianbeam at z=0 plane (i.e., the source plane) may be written as [21] (3)

where Eqs. (1) and (2) have been used. r1 and r2 are modulus of the position vectors r1 and r2 located in the transverse plane z=0. The angular brackets indicate an ensemble average. LC is the transverse coherence length. According to the extended HuygensFresnel diffraction integral and in the paraxial approximation, the cross-spectral density of the beam after propagating a certain distance z is given by [10], [22] and [23] (4)

where k=2/ is the wave number. The angular brackets indicate the averaging over the ensemble of turbulent media, which can be expressed as [10] (5)

where D(r1r2) is the phase structure function in Rytov's representation and is the coherence length of a spherical wave propagating in the turbulent medium ( is the structure constant which is used to indicate the atmospheric turbulence). On substituting Eqs. (3) and (5) into Eq. (4), we find that (6)

By use of the following formulae [24] (7)

(8)

(9)

Eq. (6) can be simplified as (10)

By setting 1=2=, 1=2=0 in Eq. (10), we obtain the intensity distribution in the received plane as (11)

To investigate the spectral degree of coherence, we consider a one-dimensional case for simplicity, in which the degree of coherence of two arbitrary points at locations Q1(x1, z) and Q2(x2, z) can be defined as [21] (12)

In this case, we consider the degree of coherence of the two points Q1(x, z) and Q2(0, z), which can be written as (13)

Based on the above-derived expressions, we can perform some numerical calculations in Section 3.

3. Results and discussions

In this section, we present some numerical results to show the propagation properties of partially coherent Bessel-Gaussianbeams in a turbulent atmosphere. Initially, we studied the change of the intensity distribution as a function of different source parameters and different atmospheric turbulence. The normalized intensity (I(x, 0, z)/I(x, 0, z)max) is used here so that it is convenient for comparison. Then more diagrams are given to illustrate the coherence variation while propagating. In Fig. 1, the normalized intensity distributions of the first-order partially coherent BesselGaussianbeam propagating in different turbulence are plotted. It can be seen from the figures that the first-order Bessel-Gaussianbeam has a doughnut-shape intensity distribution near the source plane, i.e., the central intensity is lower than the outer ring. It is shown from Fig. 1 that as the propagation distance increases, a downward peak will gradually emerge from the center of the beam and smooth out the initial ring. Then a deeper central dark core will appear as the beam continues to propagate. The difference is that, for a sufficiently long propagation distance, the beam keeps this hollow shape unchanged when the beam propagates in free space (shown in Fig. 1(a)). However, the beam intensity distribution will change into a Gaussian profile as it propagates in the turbulent atmosphere (shown in Fig. 1(b) and (c)). Furthermore, by comparison of Fig. 1(b) and (c), we can see that the intensity profile changes faster when the beam propagates in the atmosphere with stronger turbulence.

Fig. 1. The normalized intensity distribution at several selected distances in different turbulence: (a) (i.e., free space), (b) , (c) . The other parameters are chosen as =632.8 nm, =500, w0=0.02 m, n=1, LC=0.02 m. To investigate the influence of topological charges on beam propagation in a turbulent atmosphere, we plot Fig. 2, showing the propagation properties of partially coherent BesselGaussianbeams with different topological charges. As seen from Fig. 2(a), at the source plane, the zero-order Bessel-Gaussianbeam has a peak intensity in the center. On the other hand, from Fig. 2(b) and (c), we see that with a vortex phase factor exp (in), higher order BesselGaussianbeams have a doughnut-shape intensity distribution, and the larger is the topological charge, the larger is the dark core.

Fig. 2. The normalized intensity distribution at several selected distances for different topological charges: (a) n=0, (b) n=1, (c) n=3. The other parameters are chosen as =632.8 nm, =500, w0=0.02 m, , LC=0.02 m. Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 show the change in the intensity distribution of partially coherent BesselGaussianbeams with different source coherence in free space and turbulent atmosphere. It is found from both of the figures that, at a certain distance, the beam with a larger source coherence will have a darker core.

Fig. 3. The normalized intensity distribution at several selected distances for different source coherence in free space: (a) z=0.1 km, (b) z=0.6 km, (c) z=1 km, (d) z=10 km. Solid curve, LC=0.01 m; dashed curve, LC=0.02 m; dot curve, LC=0.04 m. Other parameters for calculation are the same as in Fig. 1(a).

Fig. 4. The normalized intensity distribution at several selected distances for different source coherence in turbulent atmosphere: (a) z=0.1 km, (b) z=0.5 km, (c) z=1 km, (d) z=10 km. Others are the same as in Fig. 3 except that , which corresponds to the propagation in turbulent atmosphere. Now we focus on the spectral degree of coherence of partially coherent Bessel-Gaussianbeam propagating in turbulent atmosphere. It is shown that the spectral degree of coherence is influenced by atmospheric turbulence, degree of coherence at the source plane and propagation distance. Fig. 5, Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 indicate that the spectral degree of coherence increases while propagating in free space and in atmospheric turbulence and that the partially coherent BesselGaussianbeam of lower source coherence is less influenced by turbulence than that of higher coherence.

Fig. 5. Illustration of the variation of the spectral degree of coherence against turbulence. Solid curve, ; dashed curve, ; dot curve, . Other parameters are chosen as =800, =632.8 nm, w0=0.01 m, n=1, LC=0.01 m, z=1 km.

Fig. 6. Illustration of the variation of the spectral degree of coherence against source coherence. Solid curve, LC=0.005 m; dashed curve, LC=0.01 m; dot curve, LC=0.02 m; dash dot curve, LC= (i.e., completely coherent). =500, , other parameters are the same as in Fig. 5.

Fig. 7. Illustration of the variation of the spectral degree of coherence against propagation distance in free space and turbulent atmosphere: (a) (free space), (b) (turbulent atmosphere). The other parameters are the same as in Fig. 5. The influence of turbulence on the spectral degree of coherence is shown in Fig. 5. It is shown that with the increment of the distance from the core, the spectral degree of coherence decreases from unity firstly, and then oscillates around zero. Fig. 6 is plotted to illustrate the variation of the spectral degree of coherence against source coherence. Both the partially coherent and the completely coherent Bessel-Gaussianbeams are investigated here in great detail. It is found that,

after propagating for a certain distance, the beam with the largest source coherence will become the least coherent which indicates that the beam with a higher source coherence is more influenced by turbulence than the one with a lower source coherence. Finally, Fig. 7 is plotted to show how the spectral degree of coherence changes with the increasing propagation distance in free space and in turbulent atmosphere. We find that as the beam propagates, the coherence of the beam becomes better, what is more, the oscillation of the degree of coherence becomes weaker.

4. Concluding remarks
In this paper the propagation characteristics of partially coherent Bessel-Gaussianbeams propagating through a turbulent atmosphere were studied. The expressions for the average received plane intensity and the spectral degree of coherence were derived by using the extended HuygensFresnel principle. Based on these expressions, numerical results were presented and discussed. It is shown that the intensity distribution changes faster for the beams propagating in the atmosphere with stronger turbulence. The central dark core is larger with a larger topological charge and is deeper with a larger source coherence. It is also found that the partially coherent Bessel-Gaussianbeams of higher source coherence are more influenced by turbulence than those of lower coherence, and that the spectral degree of coherence increases with the increment of propagating distance.

Acknowledgments
The research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant no. 60477041 and Key Project of Science and Technology of Fujian Province (Grant no. 2007H0027).

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