Abstract

When a laser beam is reflected from a diffuse surface, a granular scattering distribution is commonly observed, called a speckle pattern. We will discuss some of its ramifications: (1) this pattern is the time-independent analog of the signal used in the classic Hanbury Brown–Twiss stellar interferometer of the 1950’s; (2) this pattern can be processed by standard incoherent optical techniques to yield information pertaining to the object radiance distribution; (3) this same signal, when processed by coherent-optical techniques, is equivalent to the Gabor on-axis hologram or the Fourier-transform hologram, depending on the specific source configuration; and (4) signals processed by all of the above techniques are comparatively insensitive to atmospheric turbulence. An experiment is performed to illustrate the procedure of item (2) and then modified to show assertion (4).

© 1975 Optical Society of America

Image speckle patterns of weak diffusers

M. J. Lahart and A. S. Marathay
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 65(7) 769-778 (1975)

Second-order statistics of laser-speckle patterns*

M. G. Miller, A. M. Schneiderman, and P. F. Kellen
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 65(7) 779-785 (1975)

Temporal- and spatial-intensity-interferometer imaging through a random medium

Lee E. Estes and Richard Boucher
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 65(7) 760-764 (1975)

Intensity interferometry in the spatial domain*

Paul H. Deitz and F. Paul Carlson
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 63(3) 274-280 (1973)

Correlation and information processing using speckles

Marie May and Maurice Françon
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 66(11) 1275-1282 (1976)