Abstract

Scintillations are a measure of turbulence at high elevations, while most wave front aberrations originate at lower turbulence layers. Thus, inversion of scintillation patterns should allow measurement of high layers [Ribak et al. 1996]. According to this method, the higher turbulence alone is to be estimated from the intensities in the wave front sensor. Using the wave front slopes or curvature from the same data, all of the turbulence is calculated. In this manner we utilize both the amplitude and the phase of the measured wave fronts, whereas until now the amplitude fluctuations were considered noise.

© 1996 Optical Society of America