title: Atmospheric compensation with a speckle beacon in strong scintillation conditions: directed energy and laser communication applications.
abstract: Wavefront control experiments in strong scintillation conditions (scintillation index, approximately equal to 1) over a 2.33 km, near-horizontal, atmospheric propagation path are presented. The adaptive-optics system used comprises a tracking and a fast-beam-steering mirror as well as a 132-actuator, microelectromechanical-system, piston-type deformable mirror with a VLSI controller that implements stochastic parallel gradient descent control optimization of a system performance metric. The experiments demonstrate mitigation of atmospheric distortions with a speckle beacon typical for directed energy and free-space laser communication applications.
authors.affiliation: Intelligent Optics Laboratory, Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA. weyrauch@umd.edu
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Weyrauch
authors.forename: Mikhail A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Vorontsov