Date of Award

12-2004

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Physics

First Advisor

Dr. Arthur McGurn

Second Advisor

Dr. Paul Pancella

Third Advisor

Dr. Sung Chung

Fourth Advisor

Dr. Alvin Rosenthal

Abstract

We present a study of the statistics of the intensity patterns produced when coherent light is scattered by random media (volume disorder) or randomly rough surfaces. Such a random, granular interference pattern is called speckle. Particular emphasis is on the statistical correlations arising between thefluctuations of the intensities corresponding to distinct scattering paths; which are quantified by the speckle correlation function. In the first part, we present results for the correlation function computed for volume-disordered media by means of numerical simulation. Our focus is on the sensitivity of the correlationfunction to statistical parameters characterizing the volume distribution of the refraction index.

In the second part, we present theoretical calculations of the scattering cross section and speckle correlation function in the case of light scattered byrandomly rough dielectric surfaces. Our studies are based on a rough surface model consisting of a plane vacuum-dielectric interface upon which Gaussian shaped, parallel ridges made from different dielectric materials are placed at random. We show that the dielectric resonance of the ridge material can be used to enhance weak localization phenomena leading to important features in the correlation function.

Comments

5th Advisor: Dr. Hossein Mousavinezhad

Access Setting

Dissertation-Open Access

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