Analytic propagation variances and power spectral densities from a wave-optics perspective

This work presents an approach for constructing equations describing the effects of atmospheric turbulence on propagating light based on equations and concepts that will be familiar to those with a background in paraxial wave-optics modeling. The approach is developed and demonstrated by working through three examples of increasing complexity: the variance and power spectral density of the aperture-averaged phase gradient (G tilt) on a point-source beacon, the variance of the Zernike tilt difference between two physically separated point-source beacons, and the irradiance-weighted average phase gradient (centroid tilt) and target-plane jitter variance for a generic beam. The first two results are shown to be consistent with the existing literature; the third is novel, and it is shown to agree with wave optics and to be consistent with the literature in the special case of a Gaussian beam.