Theory of thin screen scintillations for a spherical wave

Abstract

A thin screen scintillation theory for a spherical wave is presented under the 'quasi-optical' approximation. We calculate the 'scattering angle', the 'observed angle', the intensity correlation function and the temporal pulse broadening for the random wave. It is found that as the wave propagates outward away from the phase screen, the correlation scale of the intensity fluctuation increases linearly while the 'observed angle' decreases linearly. The calculations are carried out for both Gaussian and power-law spectra of the turbulent medium.