From Helmholtz equation of the harmonic electromagnetic waves, the integral equations of the light field at the medium boundaries are obtained by use of the Green's theorem and are discretized into linear equation set with the values of the light field and its derivative as the unknowns. On solving the linear equation set, we realize the rigorous computations of the light fields at the boundaries. Then the intensities of the light waves scattered by the random self-affine fractal surfaces in the optical near-field are calculated, and the propagation characteristics, the evolutions of the contrast and the intensity probability density function of the near-field speckles are studied in detail. The near-field speckles are much different from the conventional speckles in the diffraction regions and in the imaging systems. There are obvious local fluctuations in the intensity distributions of the near-field speckles and such fluctuations disappear after propagating a distance of one wavelength from the medium surfaces. For the random surfaces with smaller lateral correlation lengths, the speckle contrasts approach the saturation values and the speckle fields approach Gaussian distribution within the near-field, while for the random surfaces with larger lateral correlation lengths, such evolutions become comparatively slow.
CHENG Chuanfu1, 2, SONG Hongsheng2, LIU Chunxiang2, REN Xiaorong2, ZHANG Ningyu3, TENG Shuyun1 & XU Zhizhan1 1. Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P. O. Box 800-211, Shanghai 201800, China
This paper studies the correlation properties of the speckles in the deep Fresnel diffraction region produced by the scattering of rough self-affine fractal surfaces. The autocorrelation function of the speckle intensities is formulated by the combination of the light scattering theory of Kirchhoff approximation and the principles of speckle statistics. We propose a method for extracting the three surface parameters, i.e. the roughness w, the lateral correlation length ξ and the roughness exponent α, from the autocorrelation functions of speckles. This method is verified by simulating the speckle intensities and calculating the speckle autocorrelation function. We also find the phenomenon that for rough surfaces with α= 1, the structure of the speckles resembles that of the surface heights, which results from the effect of the peak and the valley parts of the surface, acting as micro-lenses converging and diverging the light waves.
