Abstract
An instrument has been developed to study surface roughness by measuring the angular distributions of scattered light. In our instrument, a beam from a He-Ne laser illuminates the surface at an angle of incidence which may be varied. The scattered light distribution is detected by an array of 87 fiber optic sensors positioned in a semicircular yoke which can be rotated about its axis so that the scattered radiation may be sampled over an entire hemisphere. The output from the detector array is digitized, stored, and analyzed in a laboratory computer. The initial experiments have concentrated on measurements of stainless steel surfaces which are highly two-dimensional and which yield scattering distributions that are localized in the plane of incidence. The results are analyzed by comparing the angular scattering data with theoretical angular scattering distributions computed from digitized roughness profiles measured by a stylus instrument. The theoretical distributions are calculated by substituting the roughness profiles into the operand of an integral equation for electromagnetic scattering developed by Beckmann and Spizzichino. This approach directly tests the accuracy of the basic optical theory.