ABSTRACT
Stochastic light fields have been studied by scientists at least from the time of Sir Isaac Newton. It was observed first by an unaided eye then with the help of optical devices that natural light scattered from rough surfaces, such as the sea surface, can form random intensity patterns, sometimes of various colors. Such patterns were named “speckles”. From the early 1980s up to a large body of research articles have been published on various aspects of generation of scalar stochastic fields and their interaction with various media and optical systems. Various measurements of speckle fields have revealed that their polarization states may vary with propagation. In his seminal paper, James showed how the evolution of polarization properties in a model stochastic field propagating in vacuum can be predicted. The area of mathematics that analyzes the behavior of fields varying with time in a random manner is known as the theory of random processes.
