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For monochromatic plane waves arriving from a distant point source with wave-vector :

where is the complex field at position andtime , with real and imaginary parts corresponding to the electric and magnetic field components, represents a phase offset, is the frequency of the light determined by , and is the amplitude of the light.

The photon flux in this case is proportional to the square of the amplitude , and the optical phase corresponds to the complex argument of . As wavefronts pass through the Earth's atmosphere they

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