Usage of wavefront sensor for estimation of atmospheric turbulence parameters

A method is proposed to estimate the structure constant Cn2 and the outer scale L0 of turbulent fluctuations in Hartmann sensor measurements of the wavefront parameters of a light beam transmitted through a turbulent path. The method is based on expansion of phase fluctuations within a given aperture into a series of Zernike polynomials and statistical analysis of the coefficients of this expansion. Application of the method to estimating the parameters of fluid cell turbulence yielded results which are in good agreement with estimates obtained by other methods. The paper also presents the results of modeling based on measurements of the transverse component of the wind velocity on the path determined by correlation of the local slopes at four virtual subapertures.