Digital holography wave-front sensing in the presence of strong atmospheric turbulence and thermal blooming

Abstract

Digital holography wave-front sensing in the off-axis image plane recording geometry shows distinct potential for directed-energy and remote-sensing applications. For instance, digital holographic detection provides access to the amplitude and wrapped phase associated with an optical field. From the wrapped phase, one can estimate the atmospheric aberrations present and perform adaptive-optics compensation and high-resolution imaging. This paper develops wave-optics simulations which explore the estimation accuracy of digital holography wave-front sensing in the presence of strong atmospheric turbulence and thermal blooming. Specifically, this paper models spherical-wave propagation through varying atmospheric conditions along a horizontal propagation path and formulates the field-estimated Strehl ratio as a function of the image-plane sampling, the coherence diameter, the log-amplitude variance, and the distortion number. Such results will allow one to assess the number of pixels needed in a detector array when using digital holographic detection in the presence of strong atmospheric turbulence and thermal blooming.