Strehl ratios with various types of anisoplanatism

Richard J. Sasiela
Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lexington, Massachusetts 02173-9108

There are many ways in which the paths of two waves through turbulence can become separated, thereby leading to anisoplanatic effects. Among these are a parallel path separation, an angular separation, one caused by a time delay, and one that is due to differential refraction at two wavelengths. All these effects can be treated in the same manner. Gegenbauer polynomials are used to obtain an approximation for the Strehl ratio for these anisoplanatic effects, yielding a greater range of applicability than the Maréchal approximation.