Effect of oceanic turbulence on the
propagation of cosine-Gaussian-correlated
Schell-model beams
Chaoliang Ding, Lamei Liao, Haixia Wang, Yongtao Zhang and
Liuzhan Pan
1
Department of Physics, Luoyang Normal University, Luoyang 471022, People’s Republic of China
E-mail: dingchaoliang2006@126.com and panliuzhan@263.net
Received 23 December 2014
Accepted for publication 21 January 2015
Published 20 February 2015
Abstract
On the basis of the extended Huygens–Fresnel principle, the analytic expression for the cross-
spectral density function of the cosine-Gaussian-correlated Schell-model (CGSM) beams
propagating in oceanic turbulence is derived and used to investigate the spectral density and
spectral degree of coherence of CGSM beams. The dependence of the spectral density and
spectral degree of coherence of CGSM beams on the oceanic turbulence parameters including
temperature-salinity balance parameter ω, mean square temperature dissipation rate χ
T
and
energy dissipation rate per unit mass ε is stressed and illustrated numerically. It is shown that
oceanic turbulence plays an important role in the evolution of spectral density and spectral
degree of coherence of CGSM beams upon propagation.
Keywords: ocean optics, coherence, beam characteristics, propagation
(Some figures may appear in colour only in the online journal)
1. Introduction
In the past few decades, Gaussian Schell-model sources that
have degrees of coherence that have position-independent
Gaussian distribution have been studied comprehensively due
to their tractability and universality [1–4]. Since Gori et al
established the sufficient condition for devising a genuine
correlation function of a scalar or electromagnetic partially
coherent source [5, 6], some other augmented models for
partially coherent sources have been recently introduced in
which the classic Gaussian degree of coherence is modulated
by a well-behaved function such as the J
0
-correlated Schell-
model sources [7], the non-uniformly correlated sources
[8, 9], the Multi-Gaussian Schell-model sources [10–14], the
Bessel–Gaussian Schell-model sources, the Laguerre–Gaus-
sian Schell-model sources [15], the cosine-Gaussian Schell-
model sources [16], the nonuniformly cosine-Gaussian sour-
ces [17],the specially correlated radially polarized sources
[18] and the sinc Schell-model sources [19, 20] in which
some sources have been generated experimentally
[18, 21, 22]. Surprisingly, the beams generated by these
sources reveal many interesting and useful features in pro-
pagation. In particular, the beams produced by the cosine-
Gaussian Schell-model sources take on the dark-hollow pro-
file in the far-field intensity distribution [16].
In recent years partially coherent dark-hollow beams
have received a lot of attention due to their wide applications
in atomic optics experiments involving optical tweezers, atom
switches and atomic lenses [23, 24]. Some theoretical models
have been proposed to describe partially coherent dark-hol-
low beams [25–29]. However, in these models the dark-hol-
low intensity profiles keep invariant for short propagation
distances; they become Gaussian distributions in the far field.
In 2013, Z R Mei and O Korotkova introduced a new random
source, i.e. cosine-Gaussian Schell-model sources in which
the intensity is a Gaussian function, but the degree of
coherence is a Gaussian function modulated by the cosine
function [16]. Compared with the classic dark-hollow beams
model, the new model can produce dark-hollow intensity
profiles in the far field. This feature makes them particularly
Journal of Optics
J. Opt. 17 (2015) 035615 (9pp) doi:10.1088/2040-8978/17/3/035615
1
Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed.
2040-8978/15/035615+09$33.00 © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK1