TurPy: a physics-based and differentiable optical turbulence simulator for algorithmic development and system optimization

TL;DR

TurPy is a GPU-accelerated, fully differentiable wave optics turbulence simulator that accurately models wavefront distortions for optical system design and optimization across various environments.

Contribution

It introduces a versatile, open-source turbulence simulation framework supporting gradient-based optimization for optical systems in diverse propagation conditions.

Findings

Validated against established turbulence theory with 98% accuracy.

Achieved over 20x reduction in scintillation in neural network-based turbulence compensation.

Supports atmospheric, oceanic, and biological propagation environments.

Abstract

Developing optical systems for free-space applications requires simulation tools that accurately capture turbulence-induced wavefront distortions and support gradient-based optimization. Here we introduce TurPy, a GPU-accelerated, fully differentiable wave optics turbulence simulator to bridge high fidelity simulation with end-to-end optical system design. TurPy incorporates subharmonic phase screen generation, autoregressive temporal evolution, and an automated screen placement routine balancing Fourier aliasing constraints and weak-turbulence approximations into a unified, user-ready framework. Because TurPy's phase screen generation is parameterized through a media-specific power spectral density, the framework extends to atmospheric, oceanic, and biological propagation environments with minimal modification. We validate TurPy against established atmospheric turbulence theory by matching 2nd order Gaussian beam broadening and 4th order plane wave scintillation to closed-form models with 98% accuracy across weak to strong turbulence regimes, requiring only the medium's refractive index structure constant and power spectral density as inputs. To demonstrate TurPy as a gradient-based training platform, we optimize a dual-domain diffractive deep neural network (D2NN) in a two-mask dual-domain architecture to recover a Gaussian beam from a weakly turbulent path and achieving over 20x reduction in scintillation relative to an uncompensated receiver in simulation. TurPy is released as an open-source package to support synthetic data generation, turbulence-informed algorithm development, and the end-to-end design of optical platforms operating in turbulent environments.