Characteristics of coherent radiation reflected from a rough surface

The spatial characteristics of radiation reflected from a rough surface are determined qualitatively allowing for the occurrence of cooperative effects. An analysis is made of the interaction between coherent radiation and matter using the dipole approximation. A solution of the radiating oscillator equation is used to show that the interaction of dipoles results in the formation of new homogeneous oscillation modes within the regions of spatial coherence of the field in the object material (correlation zones). In this case, the radiation is distributed over the correlation zones and its characteristics in each of these are governed by the averaged parameters of the rough surface. An experiment confirmed the theory qualitatively.