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Journal of the Optical Society of America

Scattering of Light from a Rotating Ground Glass*

Lee E. Estes, Lorenzo M. Narducci, Richard A. Tuft

Published Oct 1, 1971• 107 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report some experimental results concerning the statistical properties of a light beam scattered by a rotating ground glass with average-size inhomogeneities of approximately 1 μm. Photocount statistics measured at different scattering angles and for different angular velocities of the ground glass have confirmed the known result that the scattered-light amplitude is a stochastic gaussian variable. The Bose–Einstein nature of the photocount statistics has been verified with an accuracy of a few parts per thousand. Self-beating measurements on the scattered light of a He–Ne laser in a TEM00 configuration have shown that the power spectrum is a gaussian function of the frequency. The dependence of its half-width on the angular velocity of the ground glass and on the focal length of the lens that focuses the beam on the scattering surface has been measured. The experimental results agree very closely with our theoretical predictions.

DOI
10.1364/josa.61.001301

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We report some experimental results concerning the statistical properties of a light beam scattered by a rotating ground glass with average-size inhomogeneities of approximately 1 μm. Photocount statistics measured at different scattering angles and for different angular velocities of the ground glass have confirmed the known result that the scattered-light amplitude is a stochastic gaussian variable. The Bose–Einstein nature of the photocount statistics has been verified with an accuracy of a few parts per thousand. Self-beating measurements on the scattered light of a He–Ne laser in a TEM00 configuration have shown that the power spectrum is a gaussian function of the frequency. The dependence of its half-width on the angular velocity of the ground glass and on the focal length of the lens that focuses the beam on the scattering surface has been measured. The experimental results agree very closely with our theoretical predictions.
When a laser beam passes through a rotating ground glass (RGG), the scattered light exhibits thermal statistics. This is extensively used in speckle imaging. This scattering process has not been addressed in the photon picture and is especially relevant if nonclassical light is scattered by the RGG. We develop the photon picture for the scattering process using the Bose statistics for distributing NNN photons in MMM pixels. We obtain an analytical form for the PPP distribution of the output field in terms of the PPP distribution of the input field. In particular, we obtain a general relation for the nthn\mathrm{th}nth-order correlation function of the scattered light, i.e., ${g}_{\text{out}}^{(n)}\ensuremath{\simeq}n!\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}{g}_{\text{in}}^{(n)}$, which holds for any order nnn and for arbitrary input states. This result immediately recovers the classical transformation of coherent light to pseudothermal light by RGG.
Statistical properties of partially polarized Gaussian light were studied experimentally for degrees of polarization PPP from 0.03 to 1 by a standard technique of photon counting. The Gaussian light with an arbitrary degree of polarization was obtained from Rayleigh scattering of orthogonally polarized laser beams. The factorial moments up to sixth order of the photoelectron distribution were measured with an arbitrary temporal and spatial coherence. After corrections were taken for the experimental conditions, the theoretical values of these factorial moments were compared with the experimental results. It is shown that the theoretical predictions were quantitatively well verified by the present measurements. The microscopic process is discussed from the standpoint of the light scattering system used in the present measurements, and it is shown that the orthogonally polarized components of the scattered light observed are statistically independent.
In recent years the utilization of "optical mixing" spectroscopic techniques in laser light scattering experiments has proved to be a successful method for the investigation of the dynamical properties of physical systems. By illuminating a photosensitive detector with the scattered light and measuring the spectrum or autocorrelation function of the resulting photocurrent, one can, in general, obtain the ensemble-average time dependence of specific collective excitations within the scattering medium. We present here a detailed quantitative analysis of the statistical errors inherent in such measurements due to the stochastic nature of both the scattering and photoemission processes. We determine the statistical errors on the optical-intensity correlation function as measured by two photocounting digital correlator models and on the intensity spectrum as measured by a "self-beat" optical mixing spectrometer. From these errors and a generalized least-mean-squares fitting procedure we calculate the uncertainty on the measured correlation time (linewidth) for the case of a Gaussian optical field with an exponential intensity correlation function (a Lorentzian spectrum). Scaling relationships are given which permit our numerical results to be applied to an arbitrary set of experimental parameters.
We report on the effects of dense optical systems on the static and dynamic properties of laser light. The measurements of the angular irradiance distribution as a function of the optical density and the size of the scattering centers confirm previous measurements performed by Woodward. Our study of the scattered irradiance correlation function indicates that, in the presence of multiple scattering, the relaxation time may be significantly smaller than that predicted on the basis of the single-particle Brownian model. Furthermore, the angular dependence of the irradiance relaxation time deviates from the usual proportionality to the inverse square of the momentum transfer. We discuss a number of tests that have been performed to minimize the possibility that some of our conclusions could be affected in part by particle aggregation, surface charges, and depolarization of the scattered light.
We derive theoretically that hyper-bunched light with a central normalized second-order correlation coefficient of six can be realized by a single Gaussian scattering process of parametric down conversion (PDC) light with a central normalized second-order correlation coefficient of three. The Gaussian scattering process is realized by a rotating ground-glass diffuser. We show that the photon counting probability distribution in this case obeys a Tricomi confluent hypergeometric function U [1+ n ,3/2,1/⟨ n ⟩] dependence. Furthermore, we also study non-Gaussian light-scattering probabilities that together with the different impinging light statistics give rise to new photon statistics accompanied by a variety of new values of the second-order correlation coefficient of the scattered light. These theoretical calculations suggest experiments using twin photons from a PDC process and characterizing their photon statistics properties before and after the scattering at the rotating diffuser. These investigations contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the scattering process, the generated light, and new applications.