Abstract: Considering the atmospheric extinction and turbulence effects, we investigate the propagation performances of super-continuum laser sources in atmospheric turbulence statistically by using the numerical simulation method, and the differences in propagation properties between the super-continuum (SC) laser and its pump laser are also analyzed. It is found that the propagation characteristics of super-continuum laser are almost similar to those of the pump laser. The degradation of source coherence degree may cause the relative beam spreading and scintillation indexes to decrease at different propagation distances or different turbulence strengths. The root-mean-square value of beam wandering is insensitive to the variation of source correlation length, and less aperture averaging occurs when the laser source becomes less coherent. Additionally, from the point of view of beam wandering, the SC laser has no advantage over the pump laser. Although the pump laser can bring about a bigger aperture average, the SC laser has a lower scintillation which may be due to the multiple wavelength homogenization effects on intensity fluctuations. This would be the most important virtue of the SC laser that can be utilized to improve the performance of laser engineering.

Key words: super-continuum laser source, pump laser source, numerical simulation, atmospheric propagation properties