Spatial Poincaré Plots as Descriptors of Speckle Pattern Second-Order Statistics

Abstract

It is demonstrated herein that the use of spatial Poincaré plots provides an efficient means to describe short and long-range correlations in the spatial structure of the measured intensity distribution of scattered coherent fields. The intensity distribution over a row of pixels in single frames of speckle fields with varying speckle sizes was considered. Statistical descriptors from the spatial Poincaré plots for these intensity data with variable lags were used to estimate the short and long-term variations in the measured intensities, and from these descriptors, the minimum speckle size in the speckle patterns was estimated. This approach yielded similar results for speckle size estimates as the more standard method of calculating the power spectral density of the intensity pattern and simultaneously provided information on the relative contributions of short-term and long-term variations in the measured intensity to the spatial structure of the scattered fields.