LASER PROBING OF RANDOM WEAKLY SCATTERING MEDIA

An analysis of measurements of phase and amplitude scintillations imparted on a Gaussian laser beam probing a weakly scattering random medium is presented. The second-order statistics (correlation functions and spectral densities) of the detector fluctuations (for homodyne and heterodyne interferometers) are related to the corresponding stochastic properties of the scattering medium. In the plane-wave limit simple relationships [analogous to the diffraction projection theorem for deterministic media; Opt. Commun. 1, 153 (1969)] between the wave-field statistics and the generalized spectral density of the medium are obtained.