Book Details

Description

This second edition of the Field Guide to Atmospheric Optics contains several new developments in atmospheric propagation through the atmosphere since publication of the first edition (2004). Some of these new topics include the HAP Cn2 profile model, ABCD ray matrices, beam-wander-induced scintillation, phase fluctuations, round-Earth model, analytic models for enhanced backscatter off of semi-rough targets, and non-Kolmogorov anisotropic models.As in the first edition, this Field Guide includes a review of classical Kolmogorov theory, Gaussian-beam waves in free space, and tractable atmospheric propagation models for the second-order and fourth-order field moments known, respectively, as the mutual coherence function and fourth-order cross-coherence function. Specializations of these general field moments allow the practitioner to easily calculate beam spreading, beam wander, spatial coherence (the Fried parameter), angle-of-arrival fluctuations, scintillation index, aperture-averaging effects, fade probabilities, bit error rates, and enhanced backscatter effects, among others. Knowledge of these mathematical models is important in many applications like imaging, free-space optical communications, and laser radar.

 Larry C. Andrews is a Professor of mathematics at the University of Central Florida and an associate member of the college of Optics/CREOL.