Modeling dynamic atmospheric turbulence using temporal spectra and Karhunen-Loève decomposition

We introduce a method for creating temporally evolving wavefront distortions that uses Karhunen-Loève (K-L) decomposition and the associated temporal power spectra. We model the single- and multilayer cases for horizontal and vertical paths, for which spherical and plane-wave geometries must be assumed, respectively. Simulation results confirming correct representation of the spatial and temporal statistics are presented. We demonstrate that the method is able to produce dynamic wavefronts that follow the behavior predicted by the theory while introducing key advantages in terms of storage in computer memory.