Slope distribution of a rough surface measured by transmission scattering and polarization

Transmission scattering from medium to air was used to measure the slope di stribution of the rough plane surface of a transparent glass hemisphere. A facet model successfully explained the measured results of refraction, scat tering, and polarization: Transmission scattering existed for incident angl es greater than the critical angle, all measured curves for the normalized scattered intensity versus the facet slope angle for different detection di rections overlapped, and the measured polarization of scattering was approx imately constant for >99% of the facets. The slope distribution obtained by transmission scattering agrees with those of the surface profiles in the v alid range of the profiler and can represent the slope distribution of the rough surface. (C) 2000 Optical Society of America.