Effects of turbulence on laser beam position

If a laser beam travels through a medium with constant refractive index, then the travel path will be a straight line from source to receiver. If the medium does not have a constant refractive index, then the beam will be diffracted. The lower atmosphere represents this latter case since temperature gradients near the Earth´s surface generate turbulence that results in random fluctuation in the refractive index of the atmosphere. As a consequence, a laser beam traveling through the lower atmosphere will be diffracted from the intended target. This diffraction is a random phenomenon that is difficult to model and must be analyzed using statistical tools. By using a heated water column to simulate the lower atmosphere, this research has shown that turbulence based models can be improved by first establishing a reference that is used for comparison and statistical purposes