Effective Radius of Curvature and Rayleigh Length of Partially-Coherent Array Beams Passing Through Oceanic Turbulence

Abstract

Based on the spatial power spectrum of the refractive index of ocean water, we derive analytical expressions for the effective radius of curvature and Rayleigh length of partially-coherent Hermite–Gaussian linear array (PCHGA) beams propagating through oceanic turbulence. In addition, we discuss theoretically and analyze numerically the influence of oceanic turbulence and array parameters. The effective radius of curvature and Rayleigh length of PCHGA beams increase with the relative strength of temperature and salinity fluctuations, the rate of dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy per unit mass of fluid, the array beam number, beam order, and relative separation distance, but decrease with the increase in the rate of dissipation of the mean-square temperature. The analysis provided here will help to understand the propagation of array beams through ocean turbulence.