Intensity fluctuations due to a spatially partially coherent source in atmospheric turbulence as predicted by Rytov’s method

All the existing Rytov method solutions in atmospheric turbulence deal with coherent sources. In this paper we introduce the spatial partial coherence of a beam wave source to Rytov’s method and evaluate the intensity covariance and the scintillation index due to a spatially partially coherent beam wave source. The advantage of this solution is that in the calculation of the scintillations, the need for the use of the quadratic approximation for the medium structure functions is eliminated. The disadvantage is that, since it is a weak-fluctuation solution, we cannot extend the results to the incoherent source limit when (weak) turbulence is present.