Spectral shifts produced by scattering on some model random media

Abstract

The effect of the statistical properties of fluctuating light sources on the spectrum of the emitted radiation has been the subject of intense research over the last few years. It was first shown that due to spatial correlations, the spectrum of light was not, in general, invariant on propagation, even in free space.1 It was also shown that these effects can lead to shifts of spectral lines, a result which is of interest particularly for astrophysics.2 In view of the intimate connection between radiation from localized sources and scattering from media of finite extent, similar spectral changes may also be produced by scattering. In this paper a model scatterer is introduced, whose dielectric response function is a random function of space and time and whose space-time correlation function is a Gaussian function in all its variables. Using the first-order Born approximation, such scattering media are shown to generate frequency shifts of spectral lines that imitate the Doppler effect in its main features. The shifts may be arbitrarily large. Some numerical simulations of such shifts are presented and compared with Doppler shifts.