INFLUENCE OF A RESONANT SURFACE NONLINEARITY ON THE SCATTERING OF LIGHT FROM A RANDOMLY ROUGH-SURFACE

We study the scattering of light from a one-dimensional, randomly roug h surface of a linear dielectric coated by a thin resonantly nonlinear film. We focus on the coherent scattering phenomena occurring at the frequency of the incident light and show that the scattering propertie s of this system can be described by a single, nonlinear. impedance bo undary condition. We obtain thereby a nonlinear integral equation for the electric field on the surface and present algorithms for its numer ical solution in different scattering regimes. We investigate the effe ct of nonlinearity on enhanced backscattering from this system, and th e effect of random surface roughness on optical bistability in reflect ion.