Anna CONSORTINI

Department of Physics, University of Florence, Via Santa Marta 3 50139, Florence, Italy

(Accepted May 9, 1995)

Atmospheric turbulence sensing by lateral fluctuations of thin beams is described. Practical use of correlation functions of lateral fluctuations to investigate the refractive index spectrum and its parameters, inner and outer scale and structure constant, is presented. A gmaximumh method is also shown to derive the inner scale independently of the other parameters, without either knowing much of the turbulence or solving an inverse problem.

Key words : atmospheric optics, laser propagation, atmospheric turbulence, propagation in random media, turbulence