Abstract

We study the intensity angular correlation function of coherent waves, diffusely reflected from random media in the case in which the speckle pattern does not follow the jointly Gaussian statistics and thus the factorization approximation does not hold. As a result of the breakdown of the factorization approximation, a new enhanced long range correlation appears, exhibiting two peaks due to coherent effects that are generalizations for higher statistical moments of the scattered wave function of that leading to the phenomenon of enhanced backscattering mean intensity. The samples should have small enough dimensions for this effect to be observable. Both the theory of these correlations and numerical results for s and p electromagnetic waves scattered from rough surfaces are presented.

© 1992 Optical Society of America