Stokes scintillations for vector beams in turbulence

We introduce the Stokes scintillation indices and the corresponding overall Stokes scintillations for quantitatively studying the fluctuations of both the intensity and polarization of an optical vector beam transmitting through the atmospheric turbulence. With the aid of multiple-phase-screen method, we examine the Stokes fluctuations of a radially polarized beam in Kolmogorov turbulence numerically. The results show that the overall scintillation for the intensity distribution is always larger than the overall scintillations for the polarization-dependent Stokes parameters, which indicates that the polarization state of a vector beam is more stable than its intensity distribution in the turbulence. We interpret the results with the depolarization effect of the vector beam in turbulence. The findings in this work may be useful in free-space optical communications utilizing the vector beams.