Temporal and angular spreading of blue-green pulses in clouds

The first blue-green laser propagation measurements through clouds that simulate the geometry of a satellite-to-ground communication link were made. The time history of large diameter (approximately 6-km) pulses illuminating cloud tops was recorded as a function of receiver field of view (FOV). The maximum pulse stretching observed for nanosecond laser pulses was 20 microsec for clouds of 1.5-km thickness. It was shown that the pulses could in general be represented by a linear combination of two modified gamma functions: One, a slowly decaying term, represents the power from the diffusion type of multiple scattering. The other, a much faster decaying term, represents the power from a direct nonscattered portion of the beam or from a lower order of multiple scattering. For very dense clouds, the only component measured was the diffusion type. Data of FOV scans are presented for various values of optical thickness.