<title>Light scattering from gold-coated ground glass and chemically etched surfaces</title>

Abstract

An experimental study of light scattering from gold-coated ground glass and chemically etched surfaces is presented. A substantial amount of energy was detected in the cross-polarized component of the light scattered by all our samples and, with the chemically etched surfaces, the phenomenon of enhanced backscattering was observed. The surfaces were characterized with a mechanical profilometer but the estimated statistics are inconsistent with the evidence presented by the light scattering experiments. We believe that this is due to a lack of fidelity of the profilometric measurements. A computer simulation of the effects of the non-vanishing stylus tip has also been conducted to get some insight into the causes of this discrepancy.