Scintillation of partially coherent light in time-varying complex media

Abstract

We present a theory for wave scintillation in the situation of a time-dependent partially coherent source and a time-dependent randomly heterogeneous medium. Our objective is to understand how the scintillation index of the measured intensity depends on the source and medium parameters. We deduce from an asymptotic analysis of the random wave equation a general form of the scintillation index, and we evaluate this in various scaling regimes. The scintillation index is a fundamental quantity that is used to analyze and optimize imaging and communication schemes. Our results are useful to quantify the scintillation index under realistic propagation scenarios and to address such optimization challenges.