Four methods for generation of turbulent phase screens: comparison

Abstract: We introduce a new method for generation of the phase screen samples with arbitrary spatial spectrum: Sparse Spectrum with uniform wave vectors (SU). Similar to the known Sparse Spectrum (SS) technique, it uses trigonometric series with random discrete support on the wave vector plane, but, unlike the SS technique, the random wave vectors are uniformly distributed on the individual segments of the wave vector plane partition. We compare the accuracy and computational effectiveness of the SU technique with ubiquitous subharmonics complemented DFT method, SS method, and recently published, randomized DFT technique [J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 36, 3249 (2019)]. SSU and SS algorithms generate unbiased samples, for screens with bounded phase variance, and show the superior computational effectiveness for one megapixel and larger screens.