Abstract

It is well known that the average image intensity of an incoherently illuminated object is severely degraded when viewed through atmospheric turbulence. To overcome this limitation, techniques such as speckle interferometry, bispectral analysis, and speckle holography have been developed. The problem of imaging a coherently illuminated object through turbulence is examined here. When a deterministic object is coherently illuminated and viewed through the same turbulence (double passage), the time-averaged image can be shown to contain diffraction-limited information on the object amplitude. Although the information is difficult to recover for a general aperture, the use of a suitable nonredundant aperture allows the information to be recovered quite simply. It is further shown that the use of a simple polarization discrimination scheme allows the information to be retrieved without time-averaging over the turbulence statistics. Experimental results that give qualitative confirmation of theoretical predictions are presented. Phase retrieval from the Fourier modulus has been successfully used on computer simulated data.

© 1992 Optical Society of America