Optical turbulence in confined media: part I, the indoor turbulence sensor instrument

Optical system performances can be affected by local optical turbulence created by its surrounding environment (telescope dome, clean room, atmospheric surface layer). We present our new instrument INdoor TurbulENce SEnsor (INTENSE) dedicated to this local optical turbulence characterization. INTENSE consists of using several parallel laser beams separated by non-redundant baselines between 0.05 and 2.5 m and measuring the angle of arrival fluctuations from spot displacements on a CCD. After introducing the theoretical background, we give a description of the instrument including a detailed characterization of instrumental noise and, finally, give the first results for the characterization of the turbulence inside clean rooms for optical systems studies.