Universal behaviour of scattering amplitudes for scattering from a plane in an average rough surface for small grazing angles

Abstract

It is shown that for scattering from a plane in an average rough surface, the scattering cross section of the range of small grazing angles of the scattered wave demonstrates a universal behaviour. If the angle of incidence is fixed (in general it should not be small), the diffusive component of the scattering cross section for the Dirichlet problem is proportional to θ² where θ is the (small) angle of elevation, and for the Neumann problem it does not depend on θ. For the backscattering case these dependences correspondingly become θ⁴ and θ°. The result is obtained from the structure of the equations that determine the scattering problem rather than by use of an approximation.