Laguerre-Gaussian beam scintillation on slant paths.

Scintillation evaluations for Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beams for slant paths are made using Rytov approximation. On- and off-axis scintillation is formulated and calculated up to several tens of kilometers of slant distances for different zenith angles. Scintillation index variations against radial receiver point and different source sizes are also investigated. In all cases evaluated, it is found that LG beams with higher radial mode numbers result in less scintillation than Gaussian beam. Kolmogorov spectrum function is utilized in the scintillation calculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]