Effect of atmospheric turbulence on propagation properties of optical vortices formed by us.pdfVIP

Effect of atmospheric turbulence on propagation properties of optical vortices formed by using coherent laser beam arrays 1, 2 * 1 1 Li-Gang Wang, Wei-Wei Zheng, and Li-Qin Wang 1 Department of Physics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China 2 Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N. T., Hong Kong, China * Corresponding author: sxwlg@ Abstract: In this paper, we consider the effect of the atmospheric turbulence on the propagation of optical vertex formed from the radial coherent laser beam array, with the initially well-defined phase distribution. The propagation formula of the radial coherent laser array passing through the turbulent atmosphere is analytically derived by using the extended Huygens-Fresnel diffraction integral. Based on the derived formula, the effect of the atmospheric turbulence on the propagation properties of such laser arrays has been studied in great detail. Our main results show that the atmospheric turbulence may result in the prohibition of the formation of the optical vortex or the disappearance of the formed optical vortex, which are very different from that in the free space. The formed optical vortex with the higher topological charge may propagate over a much longer distance in the moderate or weak turbulent atmosphere. After the sufficient long-distance atmospheric propagation, all the output beams (even with