LAUSR

ABSTRACT We report on experiments where non-uniformly correlated (NUC), Gaussian Schell (GSM) and Multi-Gaussian Schell (MGSM) model spatially partially coherent laser beams were propagated underwater. Two scenarios were explored: still water and mechanically agitated water. The main objective of our study was the experimental comparison of the scintillation performance among beams with different correlation functions. The results show generally increased absolute values of scintillation index for NUC beams as compared with GSM and MGSM beams. We hypothesized that this effect is related to the method of NUC beams generation. It should be noted, that the presented results document only the given experimental scenarios and show the relative comparison between GSM, MGSM and NUC beams with Gaussian used as a turbulence level benchmark. Further investigation is necessary to broaden the scope of our explorations of the propagation of uniformly correlated spatially partially coherent as well as non-uniformly correlated beam classes.