Experiment of partially coherent and coherent light propagating through a turbulence emulator

The transmission performance will be affected by scintillation while the coherent light is propagating through turbulence in atmosphere. Theoretical research shows that the effect can be deduced by using partially coherent light. However, there is few related experimental verification up to now. In this work, turbulence with Rytov variance of 0.04~0.16 was generated by a turbulence emulator of aqueous medium. Transmission experiment of partially coherent light and coherent light in weak turbulence was conducted. Scintillation index was obtained as a function of Rytov variance by analyzing the received intensity. The analysis shows that the scintillation indexes of partially coherent light and coherent light increase with the increase of strength of turbulence, however, the scintillation index of coherent light is larger than that of partially coherent light, which is consistent with the theoretical model of Gaussian Schell beam established by Andrews et al.