Optical air waveguides in strong turbulence
Abstract
Filament-generated air waveguides offer a route to low loss long-distance optical transport, but their viability in atmospheric turbulence has remained uncertain. Here, we demonstrate with experiments and simulations that guided beams in air waveguides can overcome prior estimated turbulence limits by orders of magnitude in the refractive index structure parameter C_n^2; turbulent index fluctuations much larger than the waveguide index contrast average out along the propagation path. Instead, turbulence imposes two distinct limits: scattering of the guided field beyond the waveguide acceptance aperture and, more importantly at atmospheric strengths, scintillation of the waveguide-forming beam. Scaling of experimentally validated models indicates that filament-generated air waveguides remain viable over kilometer-scale paths under strong near-ground turbulence. Our results establish turbulence limits for long-range optical guiding in the atmosphere.
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BibTeX
@misc{goffin2026optical,
title = {{Optical air waveguides in strong turbulence}},
author = {A. Goffin and G. I. Babić and H. M. Milchberg},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.01824},
eprint = {2609.01824},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.01824},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Optical air waveguides in strong turbulence
AU - A. Goffin
AU - G. I. Babić
AU - H. M. Milchberg
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.01824
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.01824
AB - Filament-generated air waveguides offer a route to low loss long-distance optical transport, but their viability in atmospheric turbulence has remained uncertain. Here, we demonstrate with experiments and simulations that guided beams in air waveguides can overcome prior estimated turbulence limits by orders of magnitude in the refractive index structure parameter C_n^2; turbulent index fluctuations much larger than the waveguide index contrast average out along the propagation path. Instead, turbulence imposes two distinct limits: scattering of the guided field beyond the waveguide acceptance aperture and, more importantly at atmospheric strengths, scintillation of the waveguide-forming beam. Scaling of experimentally validated models indicates that filament-generated air waveguides remain viable over kilometer-scale paths under strong near-ground turbulence. Our results establish turbulence limits for long-range optical guiding in the atmosphere.
ER -