ASA 128th Meeting - Austin, Texas - 1994 Nov 28 .. Dec 02

5aUW13. Intensity statistics of acoustic waves scattered by internal waves.

Roger Dashen

James Gerber

Univ. of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0319

Intensity correlations for ocean acoustic propagation show markedly different behavior in the partially saturated regime than in the fully saturated regime. In contrast to the known exponential decay of temporal intensity correlations in full saturation, partial saturation correlations fall off very slowly. This phenomenon is a consequence of the peculiar time dependence of internal waves, and does not occur in other physical situations, such as atmospheric optics. Results of a numerical simulation which demonstrate the effect are presented.