Simulation of multilayer turbulence and adaptive optics in the time-spectral domain

We introduce a method for creating temporally evolving wavefront distortions that uses Karhunen-Loève decomposition and the associated temporal power spectra. 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 calculation speed and storage in computer memory. Additionally we show how to: 1) create wavefronts that have propagated through multi-layer turbulence and 2) model the action of adaptive optics using the principles of frequency filtering.