Scintillation of Partially Coherent Light in Time Varying Complex Media

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework to analyze wave scintillation caused by partially coherent light propagating through time-varying complex media, aiding in the design of imaging and communication systems.

Contribution

It introduces a general asymptotic theory for the scintillation index in dynamic media with partially coherent sources, extending previous static models.

Findings

Derived a general form of the scintillation index for dynamic media.

Evaluated the scintillation index in various scaling regimes.

Provided insights for optimizing imaging and communication under realistic conditions.

Abstract

We present a theory for wave scintillation in the situation with a time-dependent partially coherent source and a time-dependent randomly heterogeneous medium. Our objective is to understand how the scintillation index of the measured intensity depends on the source and medium parameters. We deduce from an asymptotic analysis of the random wave equation a general form of the scintillation index and we evaluate this in various scaling regimes. The scintillation index is a fundamental quantity that is used to analyze and optimize imaging and communication schemes. Our results are useful to quantify the scintillation index under realistic propagation scenarios and to address such optimization challenges.