Simulation of optical propagation in a turbulent atmosphere using the split step method

The split step method (SSM), initially formulated by Tappert and Hardin (1974) has been used by McCaskill and Ewart (1984) and Martin and Flatte (1988) to study plane wave propagation in random media. In the SSM, the role of the random medium is to introduce phase perturbation in each step of the algorithm from the transmitter to the receiver. The method is powerful because it can accommodate finite beam sources and an arbitrary refractive index power spectrum. The authors show the ability of the SSM to study plane wave and finite beam optical propagation in a two-dimensional turbulent atmosphere. The results from the modelling are compared with other numerical methods