Laser array field correlations in underwater turbulence

Abstract

In underwater turbulent medium, field correlations are found when the incidence is a laser beam array. Variations of the field correlations against the variations in the ring radius of laser array beam, number of beamlets composing the laser array, source size, underwater turbulence parameters, i.e. the ratio of temperature to salinity contributions to the refractive index spectrum, rate of dissipation of mean-squared temperature and rate of dissipation of kinetic energy per unit mass of fluid, are investigated. Field correlations of laser arrays are found to be larger than the field correlations of the single beams. The effect of underwater turbulence is to reduce the field correlation of laser arrays.