Origins and Manifestations of Speckle

doi:10.1117/3.2548484.ch1

Book: Speckle Phenomena in Optics: Theory and Applications, Second Edition

Author(s): Joseph W. Goodman

Published: 2020

https://doi.org/10.1117/3.2548484.ch1

Author Affiliations +

Abstract

In the early 1960s, when continuous-wave lasers first became commercially available, researchers working with these instruments noticed what at the time was regarded as a strange phenomenon. When laser light was reflected from a surface such as paper, or the wall of the laboratory, a high-contrast, fine-scale granular pattern would be seen by an observer looking at the scattering spot. In addition, measurement of the intensity reflected from such a spot showed that such fine-scale fluctuations of the intensity exist in space, even though the illumination of the spot was relatively uniform. This type of granularity became known as “speckle.”