title: Choice of the model of atmospheric turbulence.
abstract: The concept of equivalent models of turbulence is introduced in order to investigate how the theoretical behavior of the structure function of an electromagnetic wave propagating in a given turbulent medium depends on the turbulence model. It is shown that equivalent models may give rise to substantially different structure functions of a wave parameter. On the other hand, the experimental structure function of the phase of a plane wave can be well fitted by the theoretical curves derived from different models, with suitable choices of the turbulence parameters appearing in the models. However, such models turn out not to be equivalent. When experimental data on the turbulence are not available, simultaneous measurements of the structure functions of more than one wave parameter are suggested, for the choice of the model.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Consortini
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ronchi