Fig. 6. Turbulence-induced modal power coupling under 200 different turbulence realizations and our turbulence probing results in simulation and experiment.

a Simulated and experimentally measured $P\left(\mathcal{l}\mathcal{=}0\right)$ for Beam 1 and 2 under 200 turbulence realizations for the four different turbulence distribution cases. b original turbulence and probed turbulence in simulation and experiment. To directly compare probed turbulence strengths with the emulated ones, we show the probing results in terms of the Fried parameters $r_0$ instead of the $C_n^2$. These two parameters are mutually related by Eq. (3). Based on Eq. (3), the equivalent $C_n^2$ of the stronger turbulence region is up to ~30X (~15 dB) larger than that of the weaker one.