High-order parabolic beam approximation for aero-optics

The parabolic beam equations are solved using high-order compact differences for the Laplacians and Runge–Kutta integration along the beam path. The solution method is verified by comparison to analytical solutions for apertured beams and both constant and complex index of refraction. An adaptive 4th-order Runge–Kutta using an embedded 2nd-order method is presented that has demonstrated itself to be very robust. For apertured beams, the results show that the method fails to capture near aperture effects due to a violation of the paraxial approximation in that region. Initial results indicate that the problem appears to be correctable by successive approximations. A preliminary assessment of the effect of turbulent scales is undertaken using high-order Lagrangian interpolation. The results show that while high fidelity methods are necessary to accurately capture the large scale flow structure, the method may not require the same level of fidelity in sampling the density for the index of refraction. The solution is used to calculate a phase difference that is directly compared with that commonly calculated via the optical path difference. Propagation through a supersonic boundary layer shows that for longer wavelengths, the traditional method to calculate the optical path is less accurate than for shorter wavelengths. While unlikely to supplant more traditional methods for most aero-optics applications, the current method can be used to give a quantitative assessment of the other methods as well as being amenable to the addition of more physics.