Analysis of Atmospheric Turbulence on a High-Power Laser Beam in Laboratory Environment

In this work, we present the results on the analysis of the atmospheric turbulence effects on a high-power laser beam in laboratory environment. We have developed a turbulence generator suitable for high-power laser beams. Two power configurations are used: 420-W and 900-W. A beam sampler with a beam profiler and a CCD camera are used to evaluate the effects on the beam. An image processing code has been implemented to analyse the bean behaviour under these conditions. We have evaluated the scintillation index <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$(\sigma_i^{2})$</tex> after turbulent propagation and obtained a value of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$3.53\times 10^{-4}$</tex> for 420-Wand <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$5.49\times 10^{-4}$</tex> for 900-W.