Spatial dynamics and statistics of optical vortices at optical beam propagation in turbulent atmosphere

Abstract

Regularities of appearance and evolution of optical vortices (wave-front dislocations) in the light field of laser beam in the inhomogeneous refractive medium are studied with the use of simple field models. We associate a dynamic system for the intensity and phase transformation with the parabolic equation describing the light propagation. Redistribution of energy fluxes when appearance and annihilation of the dislocations is considered in the phase space of this system. The hydrodynamics approach to the dislocation problem based on an analogy of the phase gradient vector field to the liquid flow vector field is developed in the paper. Novel method to calculate the dislocation statistical characteristics in the turbulent atmosphere is proposed on the base of the before-derived equation connecting the phase vortex density and intensity spatial distribution.