Speckle correlations in the light scattered from weakly rough random metal surfaces

Abstract

Diagrammatic perturbation theory and computer simulation methods are used to compute the angular intensity correlation function C(q, k|q′,k′)=([I(q|k) - (I(q|k))] × [I(q′|k′) - (I(q′|k′))]) for p-polarized light scattered from a weakly rough, one-dimensional random metal surface. I(q|k) is the squared modulus of the scattering matrix for the system, and q, q′ and k, k′ are the projections on the mean scattering surface of the wavevectors of the scattered and incident light, respectively. Contributions to C include: (a) short-range memory effect and time-reversed memory effect terms, C (1); (b) an additional short-range term of comparable magnitude C (10); (c) a long-range term C (2); (d) an infinite-range term C (3); and (e) a term C (1.5) that along with C (2) displays peaks associated with the excitation of surface plasmon polaritons. The diagrammatic methods are also extended to treat the angular intensity correlation function for the scattering of p to p, p to s, s to p, and s to s polarizations of light from a two-dimensional randomly rough surface. These correlations are again described in terms of C (1), C (10), C (1.5), C (2), and C (3) contributions to C for the two-dimensional surfaces. Short-range memory and time-reversed memory effects are observed in the two-dimensional C (1) correlations, and peaks associated with the excitation of surface polaritons are observed in the two-dimensional C (1.5) and C (2) correlations. Most of the results for the one- and two-dimensional systems are presented for incident electromagnetic plane waves. In addition, results for one-dimensional systems are presented for incident electromagnetic beams of finite width. Some of the results for one-dimensional surfaces are corroborated by means of computer simulation techniques.