2026/07/27 by Yanchen Xie, Xizheng Ke
paper · doi:10.1088/1402-4896/ae90fb
Abstract The propagation of an optical beam through turbulent media induces intensity scintillation, significantly degrading the beam quality and limiting the improvement in communication system performance. Based on Rytov perturbation theory and the spectral method, we derived the spectral filter function and the variance of the log-amplitude fluctuations for vortex beams under weak turbulence conditions. The trends associated of spectral filter function and intensity scintillation under different parameters were analyzed and subsequently validated through field experiments. Our findings indicate that the log-amplitude fluctuation variance of vortex beams is smaller than that of Gaussian beams and other beam models, and decreases with increasing topological charge. Overall, the results demonstrate that the intensity scintillation of vortex beams is less affected by turbulence, and the spectral method offers a more straightforward approach than the direct method. The physical mechanism of vortex beam scintillation effect can also be obtained from the analysis of spectral filtering functioins. This study not only fills current gaps in beam propagation theory, but also provides an effective exploration of the statistical fluctuation characteristics of beams after propagation through turbulence.