Light self-focusing in the atmosphere: thin window model

Vaseva, Irina; Федорук, М. П.; Rubenchik, Alexander M.; Turitsyn, Sergei K.

doi:10.1038/srep30697

Cited by 28 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Within this model, the propagation through the atmosphere produces only phase distortions. Our numerical modeling 6 demonstrates that the TW model describes surprisingly good beam propagation through the atmosphere even in the case of beam filamentation. The applicability of the TW model yields simple expressions for the average beam description on the target: the Strehl ratio and the beam quality M 2 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 75%

“…We will see that in typical situations the pulse power must be hundreds of times larger than the critical power for self-focusing. Then we consider the thin window (TW) model 5,6 for a description of nonlinear propagation through the atmosphere. Within this model, the propagation through the atmosphere produces only phase distortions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Also, in Ref. 6, we derived the simple relation that calculated these quantities in terms of laser field existing in the atmosphere, solving the laser propagation problem to the orbit. The FOM approach provides the quantative measure of the sensitivity to phase self-modulation, change of atmospheric density profile, laser altitude, etc.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Laser space debris cleaning: elimination of detrimental self-focusing effects

et al. 2018

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A ground-based laser system for space debris cleaning requires pulse power well above the critical power for self-focusing in the atmosphere. Self-focusing results in beam quality degradation and is detrimental for the system operation. We demonstrate that, for the relevant laser parameters, when the thickness of the atmosphere is much less than the focusing length (that is, of the orbit scale), the beam transit through the atmosphere produces the phase distortion only. The model thus developed is in very good agreement with numerical modeling. This implies that, by using phase mask or adaptive optics, it may be possible to eliminate almost completely the impact of self-focusing effects in the atmosphere on the laser beam propagation.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Laser space debris cleaning: elimination of detrimental self-focusing effects

et al. 2018

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“…Here, possibly the most eminent problem will be introduced by Earth’s atmosphere, which led to proposals of space based laser systems 23 , 33 – 35 to begin with. The success of a ground-based solution will be strictly connected to the available solutions for atmospheric propagation 36 which should be addressed in future work. Despite the challenge of fluence delivery, a ground-based solution has fewer limitations concerning electrical power, radiation resistance and system lifetime as well as system maintenance 32 , which need to be considered as well.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental verification of high energy laser-generated impulse for remote laser control of space debris

Lorbeer

Zwilich

Zabic

et al. 2018

Sci Rep

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Walking along a beach one may notice debris being washed ashore from the vast oceans. Then, turning your head up at night you even might noticed a shooting star or a bright spot passing by. Chances are, that you witnessed space debris, endangering future space flight in lower earth orbit. If it was possible to turn cm-sized debris into shooting stars the problem might be averted. Unfortunately, these fragments counting in the 100 thousands are not controllable. To possibly regain control we demonstrate how to exert forces on a free falling debris object from a distance by ablating material with a high energy ns-laser-system. Thrust effects did scale as expected from simulations and led to speed gains above 0.3 m/s per laser pulse in an evacuated micro-gravity environment.

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“…3a. If higher precision of OB location is required, for instance for spacedebris cleaning [10], then one, in addition, can continuously scan a lower power laser beam over angles to find optimal realization for transverse OB location.…”

Section: Ocis Codesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward Defeating Diffraction and Randomness for Laser Beam Propagation in Turbulent Atmosphere

Lushnikov

Vladimirova

2018

Jetp Lett.

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A large distance propagation in turbulent atmosphere results in disintegration of laser beam into speckles. We find that the most intense speckle approximately preserves both the Gaussian shape and the diameter of the initial collimated beam while loosing energy during propagation. One per 1000 of atmospheric realizations produces at 7km distance an intense speckle above 20% of the initial power. Such optimal realizations create effective extended lenses focusing the intense speckle beyond the diffraction limit of vacuum propagation. Atmospheric realizations change every several milliseconds. We propose to use intense speckles to greatly increase the time-averaged power delivery to the target plane by triggering the pulsed laser operations only at times of optimal realizations. Resulting power delivery and laser irradiance at the intense speckles well exceeds both intensity of diffraction-limited beam and intensity averaged over typical realizations. I = 0.04 max I = 0.19 max Fig. 1. (Color online) Distribution of laser irradiance I in transverse plane (only 69x69 cm central part of target screen is shown) after L = 7 km propagation of the collimated Gaussian laser beam with the waist w0 = 1.5 cm and the maximal intensity Imax = 1 through the turbulent atmosphere in the strong scintillation regime with σI = 3.3. Left panel: a typical atmospheric turbulence realization with Imax = 0.04 (61% of atmospheric realizations produce higher Imax). Right panel: a rare realization with Imax = 0.19 (0.16% realizations produce higher Imax). Dashed circles show w0 and the waist of diffraction limited beam propagated in vacuum. The initial Gaussian beam disintegrates into several speckles with the width of the most intense speckle being about w0. The intense speckles on left and right panels carry 4% and 19% of the total laser power, respectively.Laser beam propagation though turbulent atmosphere results in disintegration of laser beam into speckles at the distances exceeding several kilometers (strong irradiance fluctuation regime) [1], see Fig. 1 with examples of such propagation. At smaller distances (weak irradi-ance fluctuation regime) classic perturbative approaches well describe modification of laser beam propagation due to turbulence [2,3], while statistically averaged beam propagation in strong scintillation regimes is addressed through semi-heuristic theory [4]. The strength of the fluctuations of the irradiance I (laser beam intensity) at the target plane is characterized by the scintillation index σ I ≡ I 2 / I 2 − 1. Here and below by . . . we denote an the average over the ensemble of atmospheric turbulence realizations. It was shown in Ref.[5] that a significant fraction of deviation between theoretical value of σ I [4] and simulations is due to rare large fluctuations of laser beam intensity. Here we study the structure of large fluctuations and propose to use them for the efficient delivery of laser energy over long distances by triggering the pulse laser operations only during the times of such rare fluctuatio...

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Light self-focusing in the atmosphere: thin window model

Cited by 28 publications

References 19 publications

Laser space debris cleaning: elimination of detrimental self-focusing effects

Laser space debris cleaning: elimination of detrimental self-focusing effects

Experimental verification of high energy laser-generated impulse for remote laser control of space debris

Toward Defeating Diffraction and Randomness for Laser Beam Propagation in Turbulent Atmosphere

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