The Wolf Effect in Rough Surface Scattering

Gu, Zu-Han, Surface Optics Corp.; Leskova, Tamara A., Univ. of California, Irvine; Maradudin, Alexei A., Univ. of California, Irvine; Ciftan, Mikael, U.S. Army Research Office

doi:10.1117/3.2265063.ch11

Book: Tribute to Emil Wolf: Science and Engineering Legacy of Physical Optics

Editor(s): Tomasz P. Jannson

Author(s): Zu-Han Gu, Tamara Leskova, Alexei Maradudin, Mikael Ciftan

Published: 2004

https://doi.org/10.1117/3.2265063.ch11

Author Affiliations +

Abstract

The literature dealing with theoretical optics contains so many effects associated with the name Wolf that the selection of one or another of them to address in a paper written in honor of Prof. Emil Wolf is difficult. We have finally chosen to study changes in the spectrum of light due to its scattering from a randomly rough surface, an investigation that has its origins in work done by Prof. Wolf more than 15 years ago. In the work that prompted our study, Prof. Wolf considered radiation from a three-dimensional quasi-homogeneous source, and showed that if the degree of spectral coherence of the source is appropriately chosen, the spectrum of the emitted radiation can be redshifted or blueshifted with respect to that of the source, even when the source is at rest with respect to the observer, and the radiation propagates in free space. Unlike Doppler shifts, these correlation-induced shifts are frequency independent, and are restricted in their magnitudes to values that are smaller than the widths of the spectral lines.