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Updated: Jun 22, 2026

Measuring Spatially- and Directionally-varying Light Scattering from Biological Material
Published on: May 20, 2013
Singular-optical coloring of regularly scattered white light
Abstract:
When the surface roughness is comparable with the wavelength of the probing radiation, the scattered field contains both the regular (forward-scattered) component of coherent nature and the diffusely scattered part. Coloring of the regular component of white light scattered by a colorless dielectric slab with a rough surface is considered as a peculiar effect of singular optics with zero (infinitely extended) interference fringes. To explain the observed alternation of colors with respect to the increasing depth of the surface roughness, we apply a model of transition layers associated with the surface roughness. By applying the chromascopic technique, it is shown that the modifications of the normalized spectrum of the forward-scattered white light can be interpreted as the effect of a quarter-wavelength (anti-reflecting) layer for some spectral component of a polychromatic probing beam.
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