Measurement of surface roughness properties by means of laser speckle techniques

The statistical properties of speckle intensity variations produced by coherent light in the far-field diffraction plane of an iluminated area of an object are studied experimentally as a function of the radius of an illuminating beam over the object and are found to have a relation to its surface roughness and correlation lenght. Measurements of the surface roughness and the correlation lenght become possible by investigating the contrast variation of the speckle intensity as a function of the radius of the illuminating beam.