PROBING OF A RANDOM-PHASE SCREEN BY A FOCUSED SPATIALLY MODULATED LASER-BEAM - DIFFRACTION AT A LARGE NUMBER OF INHOMOGENEITIES

The contrast of the Young's interference fringes formed in the diffrac tion field when a dynamic random phase screen is illuminated by a focu sed, spatially modulated laser beam is obtained analytically as a func tion of the statistical parameters of the screen. A threshold relative bleaching effect is established for a highly dispersive medium when a low-divergence illuminating beam is used. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.