Measures of Temporal Pulse Stretching
Jerry Tessendorf
July, 1992
Ocean Optics XI, SPIE Publication, vol 1750, 407-418, (1992)
Temporal pulse stretching is a consequence of the multiple scatter by ocean water of a laser pulse. Although the physical process behind pulse stretching is intuitively clear, there is no widely held quantitative definition of it. Here temporal pulse stretching is defined in terms of temporal moments of the radiance at a fixed position and orientation with respect to the initial pulse axis. This definition has been chosen because it is directly measurable from the waveform output of a radiometer. The first temporal moment is a measure of the apparent delay of the pulse, and the variance from the second moment describes the increasing width. Using a WKB approach, an expression is obtained for the first two temporal moments for waveforms measured at positions along the initial pulse axis. Quantitative predictions of the temporal delay and width are made for a pulse with is initially a collimated point. To within an error of no more than 12%, the delay and width are proportional. Stretching effects on waveforms are shown graphically in plots at various distances from the source.