Phase discontinuities induced scintillation enhancement: coherent vortex beams propagating through weak oceanic turbulence

TL;DR

This paper investigates how phase discontinuities in coherent vortex beams cause significant scintillation enhancement during propagation through weak oceanic turbulence, with potential applications in optical vortex detection.

Contribution

It introduces a new understanding of scintillation enhancement caused by phase discontinuities in vortex beams and demonstrates this effect through derivation and simulations.

Findings

Scintillation index can be several orders larger than plane waves.

Coexistence of two phase discontinuity types is necessary for enhancement.

Enhanced scintillation is useful for vortex detection and measurement.

Abstract

Under the impact of an infinitely extended edge phase dislocation, optical vortices (screw phase dislocations) induce scintillation enhancement. The scintillation index of a beam consisting of two Gaussian vortex beams with ${\pm{1}}$ topological charges through weak oceanic turbulence is researched via derivation and phase screen simulation. Different combinations of two types of phase discontinuities can be obtained by changing the overlapping degree and the phase difference of two coherent Gaussian vortex beams. The scintillation indexes for them verify that the formation condition of the phenomenon is the coexistence of two types of phase discontinuities. And the enhanced scintillation index can be several orders of magnitude larger than that of a plane wave under weak perturbation (Rytov variance). This phenomenon could be useful for both optical vortex detection and perturbation measurement.