Frequency response of the atmosphere under thermal blooming conditions.

An analysis, using a single-phase-sheet model, of the effect of an oscillating thermally bloomed atmosphere on a high-power laser beam is presented. The oscillations are caused by a small modulation of the wave front of the beam at the transmitter. The primary contention made here is that the time-dependent blooming is not an oscillating version of its static counterpart; rather, new gratinglike effects are introduced by the interaction of the crosswind and the dithered high-power beam. The resulting temporal variations of the target-plane irradiance at the position of its static bloomed peak are examined and implications for slow dither are discussed.