Dislocations of the wavefront of a speckle-inhomogeneous field (theory and experiment)
Baranova N. B., Zel'dovich B. Ya., Mamaev A. V., Pilipetskii N. F., Shkukov V. V.
The average number N of wavefront dislocations per cm2 of beam cross section is calculated for a speckle-inhomogeneous monochromatic field: Ν ~(Αθγ/λ 2, where Δ θ is the angular divergence. The complex amplitude of the field goes to zero at these points. The wavefront dislocations of the speckle-inhomogeneous field are recorded experimentally by observing the interference with an auxiliary reference beam; their average number is in good agreement with the theoretical prediction.