Propagation regimes for turbulent atmospheres

Although much progress has been made in the subject of propagation through random media recently, the average user of the results could be bewildered by the large number of governing parameters and conditions of validity of diverse scintillation statistics. Continuing from previous work summarizing a state of affairs of some years ago, we present some graphical representations of parameter regimes and discuss typical propagation links in nonionized media at optical and at radio wave frequencies, as well as microwave links through an ionized atmosphere. One useful graphical representation defines parameter regimes defined by a coordinate system that uses the number of mean free paths as one axis and the number of Fresnel radii as another. It is sketched for a medium defined by Kolmogorov turbulence laws in the inertial subrange.